Hypocrite Wrapped

[Hypocrite Reader]

Dearest hypocrites,

As we flee towards the hills of the new year, our editors would like to take one last backward glance at the Sodom of 2021. As our limbs stiffen and become immobile, we recall that in 2021 we published three issues; as our flesh hardens and crystallizes, we reflect with pride upon the fact that former editor Avi Garelick was interviewed by our friends at This Is Hell! about his writing on Zionist extremism, Brad Bolman’s piece on anti-communist dentists in America was named Essay of the Week at The Syllabus, and we received notice that two essays from our SYMPTOMS issue (Marybeth Ruether-Wu’s “Sores of the Realm” and Alexander Wells’s “Perpetual Motion Machine”) were named Notable Essays in the Best American Essays Anthology. It is our hope that our writing has been a light for you in difficult times, like a pillar of salt gleaming beneath the unremitting gaze of the desert sun. 

Friends, be not impious and wicked––but if you too feel the irresistible urge to look back at the fiery ruins behind you, we humbly suggest our ten most-read articles from 2021. May they be a comfort unto you as they are unto us, we who now stand on this wind-swept plain crying tears that steadily dissolve what remains of our bodies.

Halophilically yours,

The Editors

1. Ayahuasca, The Eye, and the Ashram | SER
   "The ashram hills beckoned me; the medicine said it was time to leave my current life and go there: we had work to do."

2. Three Angels | Katy Burnett
   "Is she waiting to burst into flames, or is she already there?" 

3. The Weight of Breasts That Aren’t There | Kit Eginton
   "To be dysphoric is to be in a place you have to get out of, but it is also to be so burdened that you can’t move. It is what you have to escape and what holds you in place."

4. Kālidāsa’s Meghadhūta, or, the Story of a Yakṣa Slacking on the Job | Eric M Gurevitch
   "By trying to render the space between him and his beloved insignificant, the Yakṣa actually imparts significance to what was formerly empty space."

5. Incest, Cannibalism, and the Gods: The Rise of the House of Atreus | Michael Kinnucan
   "In that impossible litany of outrage, rape and desecration which constitutes Greek mythology, the house of Atreus stands out not for the extremity of its crimes—there it has equals—but for its capacity to survive them."

6. The Gods Show Up | Michael Kinnucan
   "A tragedy is the story of a human growing into his death mask."

7. An Interview with Yasmin Nair, Part Two: The Ideal Neoliberal Subject Is the Subject of Trauma | Michael Kinnucan
   “On the domestic front, there's a way in which sex trafficking hysteria buys into a very liberal-feminist agenda of rescuing poor sad brown women from themselves and their horrible brown oppressors.”

8. A Brief History of Rent Regulation in New York | Michael Cavadias
   "The battle that determined the trajectory rent regulation would take for the next 20 years began in December of 1996."

9. The Violence Is the Point | Avi Garelick
   "Meir Kahane wasn’t an armchair proponent of violence & racism—he went out and made it happen, organizing tirelessly towards the purpose of killing Arabs & making it socially acceptable to do so."

10. Afterthoughts: Hypocrites, or Just Proles? | Jules Joanne Gleeson
    "The sensual and non-immediate qualities of commodities are both decisive in the roles they play in our lives."

Hypocrite Reader

"Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère!"

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