"Anyone can lament our hellscape of constant distraction. The harder, and more rewarding, work is to sift through the debris, to surrender to it, and to wait for insight to emerge. Ellmann’s commitment to compilation and description suggests a resistance to hierarchies. It also flickers with tenderness. The time and care that she lavishes on her narrator seem like their own form of political speculation—that every individual is owed an unending devotion, and that such devotion, applied universally, might change the fate of the world." from 'Can One Sentence Capture All of Life?' by Katy Waldman via The New Yorker