A History of Fire

Published in Raritan, Rutgers University Press, Winter 2021 (Volume XL, Number 3).

“BBC News Online, Monday, 12 November 2018. Today’s news is black with ash. A wildfire burns in Malibu, the town of Paradise is razed, and the Californian sky is dark with smoke. In a Mexican city, two men mistaken for kidnappers are set alight. An article with the headline ‘Judgment Day’ tells not of fire and brimstone but of incendiary politics. There is crossfire, too, another kind of kindling, which does not so much burn as inflame: ‘Israel-Gaza Violence Erupts After Covert Op Killings’. 

Add to these fires words like nationalism, disinformation, and fear, phrases like fake news, terror threat, even strawberry needle scare, that the flames might glow brighter. Add too an article on immigration for tinder, another on Trump to make the smoke more acrid still. How incandescent the front page appears. How momentarily insistent and significant its headlines – magnesium bright and as short-lived.”

A History of Fire is included among the notable essays and literary non-fiction in The Best American Essays anthology (2022, HarperCollins Publishers).