Numéro Cinq | All Time Top Posts

You can be a flâneur on Numéro Cinq, sauntering, loitering, browsing the archives, the contents pages, the back issues page. Now and then, I check the stats. They don’t change a lot at the top for the obvious reason that newer pieces just haven’t had time to catch up. Something published last month won’t be there. But over time, items with a consistently high hit rate rise through the ranks. Recently Anthony Doerr and Paul Curtis moved into the Top Twenty. Also my sons Jonah and Jacob — who’d have thought nepotism would work so well? The vagaries of hit rates and search engine terms are mysterious. I only have the brute stats provided by WordPress to go on. But certain things seem clear. Our What It’s Like Living Here series has always been extremely popular. This is a human thing. We like our nests, we like the local. These are very simple essays but utterly appealing. Pat Keane and Bruce Stone both have two texts in the Top Twenty, which shows that quality and consistency do win out. A. Anupama has a translation and classical Indian poetry constituency that happens to be very large and welcome. And the startling originality and visual panache of Anna Maria Johnson’s essay on Annie Dillard has always pulled in readers.

I am copying a second list  below the Top Twenty. It’s the top twenty for the last three months. Interesting to compare.

All Time Top Twenty

1. What It’s Like Living Here — Richard Farrell in San Diego
2. Translations of Classical Tamil Love Poetry: Essay & Poems — A. Anupama
3. The Senses of an Ending: The Grapes of Wrath, Novel and Film — Patrick J. Keane
4. A Visual Approach to Syntactical and Image Patterns in Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: Essay & Images — Anna Maria Johnson
5. From “The Deep”: Fiction — Anthony Doerr
6. What It’s Like Living Here — From Lisa Roney in Orlando
7. What It’s Like Living Here — Wendy Voorsanger in San Mateo
8. Nabokov’s Exoneration: The Genesis and Genius of Lolita — Bruce Stone
9. 7 Things I Learned from Reading 15 List Essays — John Proctor
10. What It’s Like Living Here — Michelle Berry in Peterborough, Ontario
11. The Consecution of Gordon Lish: An Essay on Form and Influence — Jason Lucarelli
12. Montaigne On Experience & Defecation: Essay — Jacob Glover
13. What It’s Like Living Here — Kim Aubrey in Saskatoon
14. Translation, Adaptation and Transformation: The Poet as Translator — Richard Jackson
15. Revisiting Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet — Paul M. Curtis
16. The Formalist Reformation | Review of Viktor Shklovsky’s Bowstring: On the Dissimilarity of the Similar — Bruce Stone
17. What It’s Like Living Here — Gwen Mullins in Chattanooga
18. Talking to a 17-Year-Old Girl, When You are a 16-Year-Old Boy: Micro-Memoir — Jonah Glover
19. Let Us Be Silent Here: Poems in English and Spanish — John B. Lee/Manuel de Jesus Velázquez Léon
20. On Looking Into and Beyond Wordsworth’s Daffodils: An Intrinsic and Contextual Reading | Patrick J. Keane

§

Last Three Months Top Twenty

1. From “The Deep”: Fiction — Anthony Doerr
2. Translations of Classical Tamil Love Poetry: Essay & Poems — A. Anupama
3. From Roses by Rainer Maria Rilke — Translated by David Need
4. Uimhir a Cúig | Dunamon: Poems — Jane Clarke
5. I am the big heart | Poems — S. E. Venart
6. Revisiting Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet — Paul M. Curtis
7. The Senses of an Ending: The Grapes of Wrath, Novel and Film — Patrick J. Keane
8. Hot: Short Story — Adrienne Love
9. Plot Structure in Three Short Stories | Essay on Conflict and Form — Michael Carson
10. Through leaded panes | Memoir — Dawn Promislow
11. Research for the Larger Project | Poems — Maggie Smith
12. Painter & Poet: Studies in Creativity — Victoria Best with Miranda Boulton & Kaddy Benyon
13. Portland | Fiction — Gary Garvin
14. What It’s Like Living Here — Michelle Berry in Peterborough, Ontario
15. Nabokov’s Exoneration: The Genesis and Genius of Lolita — Bruce Stone
16. What It’s Like Living Here — Richard Farrell in San Diego, CA
17. Numéro Cinq at the Movies: Tom Tykwer’s “Faubourg Saint-Denis,” Introduced by R. W. Gray
18. How Swiss Is It? | Review of Walks with Robert Walser by Carl Seelig — Dorian Stuber
19. 7 Things I Learned from Reading 15 List Essays — John Proctor
20. Leconte de Lisle’s Les Roses d’Ispahan | Translation & Performance — Marilyn McCabe