The Best Shortreads Of 2014

I used to have misgivings about year-end lists, finding them somewhat self-aggrandizing and maybe even a little desperate, particularly in cases where publications resurfaced their own previous work as if it were some special secret that your having missed upon its original appearance resulted in your becoming desperately deficient in cultural cachet. That said, what with the ever-increasing abundance of content on the Internet in our wonderful data-driven era there is a convincing case to be made that readers are unlikely to have seen the things that might be meaningful to them over the course of the day, or month, or year. Still, everyone seems to focus on the more extensive selections from their output. What about the less verbose efforts? Those tiny essays that say so much in so few words? They deserve even more acknowledgment, don’t they? They almost certainly do. In that spirit and without any further explanation I would like to direct you to a collection of the finest shortform essays we published this year on The Awl. Savor them slowly. Who knows when brilliance like this might come along again?

• January found one of our writers in a deeply contemplative mood, perhaps due to the changing of the calendar.

• February brought thoughts of mortality to a yearning scribe.

• March saw a correspondent tackle one of life’s eternal mysteries.

• April came with both showers and questions concerning theology and purpose.

• May produced a premature but prescient assessment of the era.

• In June we received a missive that seemed to indicate a sense of acceptance and resignation over the current condition; a long period of silence was broken by a piece that in its simplicity functioned as both affirmation and continuation.

What a year it has been for brevity! Let’s hope we see more (by which I mean less) like this in 2015. I dream of a world in which everyone shuts the fuck up completely, but in the meantime I will be contented with expressions of writerly thought capped at two or three words max. And now I will be quiet.