Why won’t you friend me, Chi-chi? I looked through all your friends now that you’re friends with my friend Eli. I noticed something interesting looking through all your friends. It seems to me all your friends—almost a thousand—are dead, Chi-chi. Is the reason you won’t friend me because I am living? More…
The sting lasted the entire weekend, everyone crashing at the house, hardly sleeping. Twenty-two predators showed up. Old, young, fat, thin. One got tasered while backing away from cops. Jane met the one-armed man, who had just come back from Iraq, and she met the “celebrity” who’d had a supporting role on a sitcom from the previous decade. They all went away in handcuffs. More…
Yesterday for breakfast I ate three pieces of fish (arctic char, salmon, and sea trout—in that order—all pan-roasted) with a big bowl of yogurt and sliced cucumbers flavored with cumin and lemon. I drank three pots of coffee. I had a jelly donut for fun. I had been dreaming of turtles. More…
“Fifty-one windows?”—Bill Heavenly, Khan Kerensky’s boss, had been in Amsterdam in August for the funeral of a friend. “Fifty-one windows in eighteen properties,” shaking his head, leafing through the architectural plans. “Shit is bananas. How have they survived.” More…
The hand-scrawled sign over the door to the Happy Salamander preschool read: Closed indefinitely due to pedagogical conflicts. Please call 917 887 8884 for further information. Sincerely, The Blue Newt Faction. “Fuck,” I said, a word I had made sincere efforts to purge from my repertoire of professed displeasure, at least in the presence of my son. More…
Harold strung half a dozen faces into a unity: it was Failure, then, who had given Harold directions one night and whom Harold had also seen standing in a subway car, and seated at a table at El Famous Burrito; Failure who’d peered slyly at him from the steps of the public library, and had looked at him with ugly frankness from the other side of a bagel cart. More…
Well we were all set to build Indiana’s first official mountain. But then some folks showed up all yelling about how this mountain we were building might destroy some habitats. “What we’re gonna do is build this mountain from one-hundred-percent natural habitat.” our foreman said. “If anything we’ll be adding thousands of tons more habitat to your state.” More…
I decided to put a stop to him: I asked for twice the money. He accepted and I had to scrounge for adjectives that would bring the deeper Mexico to light. I also introduced him to Gonzalo Erdiozabal. Here in Mexico, Gonzalo resembles an arrogant swashbuckler from 1940s Hollywood. In Austria, he had people revere him as Xochipili, presumed descendant of Emperor Moctezuma. More…
Jadwat was unreliable. It hadn’t been true then. There had been no rain at her wedding. Today there was no sunshine. The reservoir of these tears had accumulated in the course of a difficult year. If she was distracted while driving, or couldn’t add two numbers together, or misplaced the key to her surgery, the tears found their way to the surface. They embarrassed her. More…
“Excuse me … . Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I think we’ve got it just right now, though.” He saw that she was holding his coat, which seemed to be covered with some sort of gravy. “Your photographer’s just switching lenses, and then I think we’re done. You’ve both done a great job, though. We had no idea. Thank you for putting so much thought behind it.” More…
The girl had to go away for work to the coast for two months. She missed her visits to the family friend’s house, and carefully selected a gift for them a day before her return: a plastic packet full of hand-picked avocados the size and shape of giant gem squashes, and a bottle of raspberry vinaigrette. More…
In New York, they saved. They saved on orange juice, sliced bread, they saved on coffee. On movies, magazines, museum admission (on Friday nights). Train fare, subway fare, their apartment out in Queens. It was a principle, of sorts, and they stuck to it. To be poor in New York was humiliating, a little; but to be young—to be young was divine. More…
Casimir and I were standing like two captains on one of the islands in the middle of Broadway and waiting for the light to change. This island was like a ship sailing down a wide river, and whoever stepped on it became a regular navigator for a moment. More…
The airport is deserted at two in the morning, Pyongyang time. A tractor stands on the apron behind an unroofed, unpainted cargo container. It hisses into life as he passes into the custody of the ground guards. The turboprop, which has brought him all the way from Karachi, spins down its engine. He looks back at the aircraft. More…
I don’t like being a spider. Except for rash moments when my web’s been struck and I scramble automatically after my prey, hissing and excited, my venom up and my jaws parted wide—perhaps I’m even smiling—I don’t like being a spider at all, generally I experience the same contempt for spiders as do the other creatures of this terrible world. More…
She told me after that first day in Mexico that she had pretty much decided not to use the knife for personal gain. She said the knife only worked with her because she was pure of heart. I thought that was fine at the time. I still pretty much agree. Only I thought maybe it wouldn’t hurt anything if we started a personal security company or something. More…
Dear Molly Matthews,It’s been nearly a week since we wrote and we still haven’t heard from you. We understand if you are upset. Perhaps you have begun to sense that this is not the normal relationship a woman has with a municipal license and registration office. And we agree, it is different. But that does not necessarily make it wrong. More…
True hoaxes are radical. Chabon’s posturing turns out to lend support to a conservative a vision of Jewish identity that’s ideologically noxious and, ultimately, cruel. As I listened, I found myself laughing and impressed, but I also listened to the audience’s enthusiastic clapping and wondered whether they were applauding the entertainment or the sentiments behind it. More…
He went home and found his ghost in the kitchen, eating his PowerBars. “You’re the only one I know who wouldn’t lie to me,” Levin said. “Am I good-looking?” She played with the aluminum wrapper, rolling it back and forth between her fingers. “What about my personality?” “Also neutral.” Levin pulled out one of his kitchen chairs and sat down. More…
Why, after all, must Coetzee be such a gloom-monger? For if he desires to draw attention to suffering, doesn’t the apprehension of such become the more acute when full allowance is made for the possibility of happiness? Or might it be that John Maxwell Coetzee, like so many men, is simply afraid of life? More…
I lost my way.
Can I say that
and still be trusted? More…
I did not come to Harvard so that my roommate could sleep with, or almost-sleep-with, the Vice President’s daughter. In my secret dreams, or even from past experience, I would have thought that it would be I who slept with, or almost-slept-with, the Veep’s handsome daughter. But to have a roommate who did, that is also something. And to realize this, that it is something, may just be the beginning of wisdom—or almost-wisdom, as the case may have been. More…
Dear Beth—I liked your last letter. You are funny. Really. I’ll tell you, mostly there is just a lot of sitting around here doing nothing. I play cards and THIS IS THE REAPER! WHEN I AM BORED I MASTURBATE AND THINK ABOUT YOU. I’m so sorry. Oh my god. I can’t believe that just happened again. More…
It’s the middle of the century and we’re down on State Street, Dee, Anna, Harry, Empty and me. Xenophanes. Casino, for short. My name for the boozy night, a game we wayward students play. The university’s fallen away behind us, the library has. Good riddance, we’re out on the town on this desolate blind-eyed night, searching out the elusive Logos in our beer. More…
