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Guest Essay

By Tom McAllister

Mr. McAllister is a novelist and the author of the memoir “Bury Me in My Jersey.”

I was grading assignments for an undergraduate course in memoir writing when I experienced a severe crisis of faith regarding the future — of academia, of writing, of thinking. I’d asked my students to write about an obsession, telling their life story through the lens of a pop-culture fixation. This assignment invariably produces a few surprising, insightful and energetic pieces from students who’ve never been asked to take their own interests seriously before. This time, however, I received a 2,000-word submission defining “obsession,” citing the D.S.M.-5 and........

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