Day 8: "The Anatomy of Panic"

Michael W. Clune (Harper's Magazine, May 2023)

In this twenty-two-day series, we are counting down the days to publication (October 22, 2024) with a brief passage from each of the twenty-two essays included in The Best American Essays 2024. These excerpts were curated by Best American Essays Editorial Assistant Cheyenne Paterson and are presented in the order of the volume’s table of contents.

“I read at a medium pace. Too fast and the voice in your head can’t keep up with the words. That’s what your thoughts are waiting for. They catch the voice and flood your head with news of the catastrophe unfolding in your body. But if you read too slow then it’s not just the chapter breaks you have to watch out for. Now you’ve got holes and gaps between the words. Maybe in some situations that’s a good thing. You can savor the words. The words come swaddled with silence, like expensive truffles, each one separate, while cheap chocolates are packed next to one another with their sides touching.”

—Michael W. Clune, “The Anatomy of Panic,” Harper’s Magazine, May 2023.