Essays are great.

• The talented Rebecca Solnit (above) discusses “elite panic,” among other things, in an an interview at BOMB Magazine.

• “Zadie Smith on the rise of the essay.“

• The kind of wishy-washy title of Bob Thompson’s piece in The American Scholar, “Writing About Writers,” does not give it due justice. Please read.

Lit.

• Thinking of gifting a newfangled, bougey little reading device called the Nook? Well, you’re outta luck. Yep, you may have to settle for the Kindle, which Amazon has sufficiently stocked for the holidays.

• Penguin Classics made a top 10 list: the classics of their classics, and they made a trailer to go along with it. (And HTMLGIANT’s brief description of it as “dopey” was, truly, an understatement.)

Music stuff.

• Yup, there is indeed a band called Truman Peyote

• 2 videos of Neutral Milk Hotel in 1998? Yes please.

• Blake Butler writes a “dystopian work of genius” (Scorch Atlas), with Wolf Eyes, Swans, and Agoraphobic Nosebleed as his soundtrack.

Etc.

• Drink Napa Cabernets for Thanksgiving this year.

• Seven bulls escaped from the set of Tom Cruise’s latest movie in Spain. Vulture blamed it on the SPs. I’m going to go with the aliens. That’s right.

• The Daily Dish provides a sweet-ass visualization of the decline of empires.