Don Unger

The New Yorker Didn't Want You to Read These Don Unger

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.