the weekend read

Finding God in Love and Death

Christian WimanCourtesy of Copper Canyon Press

Every Friday Vulture finds a great story that’s a little too long to read on the computer screen. Fiction, long-form narrative journalism, epic blog sagas — any of these could be your Weekend Read. Print it out on the office printer, smuggle it home, and curl up with it after brunch.

A year ago Christian Wiman, a brilliant poet and the editor of Poetry magazine, was diagnosed with incurable cancer on his 39th birthday. His short memoir “Gazing Into the Abyss” appears in the current issue of The American Scholar, and Wiman’s writing is remarkable for both its toughness in the face of difficult times and its vulnerability to the power of deep emotion. The specter of death has brought Wiman closer to his new wife and to his faith, and as a result the story isn’t a depressing one but instead a bracing, thought-provoking one. “Gazing Into the Abyss” is this week’s Weekend Read.

Gazing Into the Abyss [The American Scholar]

Finding God in Love and Death