The New Yorker Didn't Want You to Read These

The New Yorker is one of those, writerly, Holy Grail kind of markets. When "ideas" blossom in the heads of we-the-mentally-ill (if I could stop writing or find some other way to clear my head, I would), when we commit them to paper or, more accurately-really for most of my life at this point-put-fingers-to-keyboard it is one of the main targets: try The New Yorker first; when you fail, go regional; if that fails, go local; after that it's just . . . some personal archive or other.Which is what the thirty+ pieces here mostly are: personal archive, almost all of them rejected by The New Yorker's "Shouts & Murmurs" column-although, at this point, about two thirds of them published online.The final, five-piece, section is comprised of work that was done when I was maintaining my Hydrocarbonaholics Anonymous blog (or fever dream). A more comprehensive explanation precedes those essays. Good stuff? Bad stuff?You be the judge.