There's been lots of drama about Chris Hughes putting his stamp on the New Republic. Martin Peretz is not pleased. Whatevs. I think the online content looks fabulous.
I particularly liked Adam Kirsch's article about the new essayists.
The self, then, has always been at the heart of the literary essay. But the new essay is exclusively about the self, with the world serving only as a foil and an accessory, as a mere staging ground for the projection of the self. Formally, one might describe the work of Sedaris, Crosley, Rothbart, and company as autobiographical comic narrative: short, chatty, funny stories about things that happened to me—weird things, or ordinary things that are made weird in the telling. What we now call an essayist used to be called a humorist. Sedaris’s books are sold as essays, but he is plainly trying to be Thurber, not Addison.
Apt. 11d 
Just from the excerpt, that’s an awfully narrow selection of essayist, and it also fails the “So what?” test.
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I don’t care how Sedaris is classified; he’s an icon. This weekend I heard him on an old podcast of This American Life, where he talks about his dream to produce a show where he imitates Billie Holliday singing commercial jingles. His rendition of the Oscar Meyer song is priceless.
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