Andrew Sullivan returns...
(email just sent to his mailing list)
Dear Dishheads
It's now been over a year since we ended the Dish, and I'd be lying if I told you there hadn't been a few moments this year when I have had one hell of a blogging itch. So many story arcs that the Dish covered have subsequently progressed and evolved - Obama's long game as the liberal Reagan, the degeneracy of American conservatism, the Palin farce which paved the way for the Trump excrescence, the breakthrough with Iran, and the return of torture and grim advance of sponsored content.
So am I going back to blogging? Nuh-huh. The year off was revelatory. It's only when you stop being pathologically attached to each ripple in the web-stream that you see most clearly how ephemeral so much of it is, how emotionally and nervously draining it can be, and how our discourse can be fatally distorted as well as deeply informed by the onslaught of the social web. I hope to write about what I learned in detox - it culminated in ten days of silent meditation last fall - soon.
This email is to let you know that I'm going back to long-form journalism, as I hoped to, at New York Magazine, edited by the incomparable Adam Moss (with whom I've worked, on and off, since the late 1980s). I start today and am already working on an essay on Trump. I'll also be blogging the Democratic and Republican conventions - two discrete, unmissable moments for bloggery in real time. I know, I know. But if I keep the blogging restricted to two bouts of four days each, I'm hoping I won't relapse.
My other news is that I've also committed to two new books. The first, with the working title of "Keeping Faith," is a spiritual memoir and theological argument about the future and meaning of Christianity in the 21st Century. The second, called "Thinking Out Loud," is a collection of my essays and reviews and posts over the last thirty years. I'm excited to be published by Simon and Schuster, with Ben Loehnen as my editor. I'll keep you posted as these projects unfold.
I also just want to say how much I have missed our daily, hourly conversation. You remain the best readership I have ever had - the best teachers I have ever learned from - and I truly hope you'll stay in touch as I move into essays and book-writing again. It's been wonderful, as always, to bump into Dishheads in real life and be reminded of how precious a thing it was that we had, and how that community for serious ideas and argument is still there - and still vibrant.
And no, this is not an April Fools. With Donald Trump as the GOP front-runner, it seems to me a civic duty to get engaged with this election. I'm sure you're doing your bit; now it's time for me to do mine.
in dishness
andrew
