"What the Constitution Means to Me" by Heidi Schreck (2017)

The play occupies an amorphous middle ground between a serious discussion of the merits and the demerits of the Constitution, and... a polemic? political activism? entertainment? art? It is hard to classify. As written, the play is not persuasive enough as a serious discussion and is not engaging enough as a work of art. The play is too literal, too topical (e.g., in its celebration of victimhood), which are understandable obstacles that arise on the path to timelessness should the playwright happen to come from a time and a place.

As John Updike mused in an interview, "Perhaps I have written fiction because everything unambiguously expressed seems somehow crass to me."

"Nuclear War" by Annie Jocobsen (2024)

The novel explores one branch in a tree of possibilities that spans various nuclear war scenarios. The novel has no central protagonist. Indeed, billions will die in the end (the examined branch is pessimal); it would be immoral to encourage special attachment to just one among many. The good news is that all is over and done in under an hour. Except perhaps for the old New Zealanders and the new ones, the arrivals on the nuclear submarines. These people would get to watch the show for a little longer, until the mass extinction does them all in, too.

The novel's style is the kind of vernacular that ChatGPT would happily disgorge if directed towards the romans de gare aisle at a local airport.

"On Democracy" by E. B White (2019)

White might as well have written all these essays in the last four years. Had he done so, the contemporary discourse would have much benefited from his calm, dignified, aristocratic tone. The clarity of vision is not hard to attain if one is prepared to step away from the mob and reflect a little. Voices unadulterated by political activism existed and were heard in the past, exist and are heard today, and will in all likelihood persist far into the future.