The artists stand backstage in front of a pink background, smiling.
Earlier this week, we celebrated the 100th anniversary of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. Thanks to @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social, @mirajacob.bsky.social, @minjinlee.bsky.social, Colm Tóibín, and Jay O. Sanders for an enlightening evening, and to everyone who joined us!
(Photo by Nile Scott)
It used to be somewhat more obvious that the ability to think was the mark of the human animal, not a tedious backstage task but the entire substance of our tragicomic show. The drama of reasoning—applying abstract principles to real dilemmas, starting in one mental region and ending up in another faraway place, changing one’s mind, undergoing a conversion of the heart—is the admittedly humble glory of our species. It’s not always fun. Filling up a blank page is a daunting symbol for the tough challenge posed by this sort of freedom, which might be why new “large language model” concerns seem so dead set on identifying writing as an adversary for the humans of the future to finally vanquish. (My colleague Hua Hsu recently reported on what this mind-set is already doing to the practice of writing at institutions of higher learning.)
When all the thinking is outsourced what's left, asks @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social. Others say that LLMs just help with the brainstorming or the drafting or the revising but when you strip all those things away, we also need to ask what's left. www.newyorker.com/culture/crit...
04.02.2026 21:17 — 👍 9 🔁 2 💬 2 📌 0Bari Weiss is presenting her plans to the CBS staff today. Weiss quite famously live tweeted a contentious internal meeting at the Times in 2020. I wonder if she thinks her employees are entitled to do the same thing now?
27.01.2026 16:35 — 👍 648 🔁 70 💬 8 📌 3
“The existence of so many real and unvarnished images of [Alex] Pretti’s killing posed a problem that Trump’s underlings have tried to patch up with words,” Vinson Cunningham writes. www.newyorker.com/culture/on-t...
26.01.2026 17:00 — 👍 64 🔁 23 💬 7 📌 1
I wrote a TNY Take about Jane Kramer’s The Founding Cadre, a reported piece from 1970 in which Kramer embedded with a radical feminist CR group for nearly a year— which ended up getting published using pseudonyms, bc the editors found the topic too alarming: www.newyorker.com/magazine/tak...
26.01.2026 16:36 — 👍 62 🔁 13 💬 2 📌 0
Trump and his minions are fine with killing people in plain public view; how many will they kill or maim in secret? Our friend @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social asks the pertinent question. www.newyorker.com/culture/on-t...
25.01.2026 23:34 — 👍 7 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0
i wrote about watching it, about evidence, about witness.
www.newyorker.com/culture/on-t...
Donald Trump and his spokespeople use press conferences “to set forth their distorted vision of the future—and, maybe more subtly, to let slip their estimation of the public,” Vinson Cunningham writes. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
24.01.2026 21:00 — 👍 81 🔁 30 💬 9 📌 0
„If this is what they do when we can see, what's going on in the places—-planes and cars, detention centers— where we can't?" Vinson Cunningham staff writer The New Yorker
by @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social
26.01.2026 09:38 — 👍 7 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0
Even before Alex Pretti's name was widely known, his public killing was made exponentially more public by its rapid dissemination over social media and the news. www.newyorker.com/culture/on-t...
25.01.2026 22:00 — 👍 105 🔁 33 💬 9 📌 0
Our ability to participate in witnessing, to corroborate each other’s commonsense, to assure one another that, no, you are not crazy, they did just “fucking kill that guy,” is a threat to the Administration’s assumption of total power… www.newyorker.com/culture/on-t...
25.01.2026 22:22 — 👍 10 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
i wrote about watching it, about evidence, about witness.
www.newyorker.com/culture/on-t...
for next week's @newyorker.com i wrote about the art of the Trump press conference
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
funniest running bit on twitter is "gentle r kikuo johnson new yorker cover drives idw and tpot types insane trying to interpret it"
15.01.2026 13:44 — 👍 1132 🔁 113 💬 33 📌 22TV finales can feel like saying goodbye to a close friend but, should they really mean so much to us? @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social, Naomi Fry, & Alexandra Schwartz discuss the concept in this fascinating moment from ‘Critics at Large’: harkaudio.com/art-great-tv...
02.01.2026 23:43 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
this week's edition of Vinson Cunningham's Quiet Storm includes tunes by Nas, Labi Siffre, Sevyn Streeter, Peter Gabriel, Geese, and many others—plus a brief meditation on the increasingly endangered communal function of radio.
vcunningham.substack.com/p/be-yourself
this week's edition of Vinson Cunningham's Quiet Storm includes tunes by Nas, Labi Siffre, Sevyn Streeter, Peter Gabriel, Geese, and many others—plus a brief meditation on the increasingly endangered communal function of radio.
vcunningham.substack.com/p/be-yourself
‘“You don’t get to choose what you write about,” she said.
The truth of the statement shivered through me; I’ve been thinking about it for months now, less as a commentary on the writing life than a brutal fact of how it feels to live in history.’
By Vinson Cunningham:
‘Pulpit Blues’, a new story by Vinson Cunningham — inspired by the art of Lorna Simpson on.ft.com/47tkryX
23.08.2025 05:30 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥
29.12.2025 03:44 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
A beautiful essay by @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social: Birth Pangs www.newyorker.com/culture/2025...
26.12.2025 18:00 — 👍 29 🔁 7 💬 1 📌 0
For reading with your pie and tea/bourbon by the fire this evening:
@vinsoncunningham.bsky.social 's What Kind of New World Is Being Born?
www.newyorker.com/culture/2025...
This from @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social @newyorker.com is brilliant and necessary. I'm grateful for it.
What Kind of New World Is Being Born?
www.newyorker.com/culture/2025...
❤️🔥
25.12.2025 18:55 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
a Very Special Holiday Edition of my Quiet Storm—two hours of tunes to help the weekend glide by: vcunningham.substack.com/p/our-house
28.11.2025 19:28 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
a Very Special Holiday Edition of my Quiet Storm—two hours of tunes to help the weekend glide by: vcunningham.substack.com/p/our-house
28.11.2025 19:28 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0all evidence of a great hope that, by embodying those details, you might permanently save them.” -Vinson Cunningham
28.07.2023 15:13 — 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Magazine photo with text quoted in tweet text
“That’s another unexpected thing about grief, how it coaxes you into an attempt at becoming the other, taking on their tics and savoring how they used to talk, fishing a ring out of their jewelry box and stuffing it onto your finger—
28.07.2023 15:13 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
