The best writers make me feel both more and less alone. Without flinching, they’ll pinpoint the limits of human connection and consumption, the folly of pinning your happiness on a single person or product. This tough love is extremely frightening and ultimately liberating. No romance or promotion will save a person from intermittent loneliness. Only by tolerating that fact can you eke out a new template for existing.

I finished Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely in the dimly lit hours of a recent sleepless night. It hit me hard, a collage of blue hallucinations glued together. The setting is New York City before and after September 11. The 24 hour news cycle has really started to gyrate. Dead bodies are bedrocks of the spectacle. Black teenagers get executed by police who get forgiven. White teenagers slaughter innocent school kids. War criminals contort their lips convincingly for the cameras.