The problem with gringos, Malik said to him one day, is that they don’t know how to make conversation. They share their opinions when they feel authorized to do so, but they don’t know how to sit down and talk about anything just to talk about it, without getting impatient. More…
They don’t have misomeru (the feeling on first meeting that this is just the person you’ve been looking for), but eventually, in hindsight, they have koi no yokan (the feeling that this is going to tumble into love). But how does one manage vehicular collision on the internet, and why would the prince and the singer have Japanese feelings? Since this is not my story, you don’t have to listen to me rambling on about what I want. More…
The animals once lived in cages at the city zoo. An orangutan was transferred from a provincial zoo to mate with females outside its tribe. But the orangutan did not mate. Instead, it introduced new ideas. First casually, a snatch of a song sung through the bars, then larger and larger groups, gathering to listen to scenes of life in the wild. More…
I had learned to dance at debate camp, where the pervasive self-consciousness of the smart-kid atmosphere encouraged a freak-out manic dancing, pursued between males, shouting the lyrics in each other’s faces. But we never had booze. At college—in college I had briefly taken ballroom. That was it. And at the Cain’s I did this crazy foot-stomping dance that I think took my new friends by surprise. More…
They decided on a night of gouging humidity to offer a relative every six months as a sacrifice to the curse, whose mouth seemed to grow wider with every new birth, and whose interior voice amounted to a cloud of anxious discomfort in the skulls of anyone who inherited its frequency. Shlomo the Fool tried to knock it out of his head like water caught in an ear, and ended up only breaking a holy idiot’s rearview mirror. More…
When my friend’s fiancé founded “Men Against Violence,” a lesbian at our college didn’t like it. A room full of men talking. What were they talking about? There was no way for us to know. I said they talked about porn. I said they were scared about violence in porn. This was in college, when we were all more scared about violence in porn. But porn won. More…
They used to play a game called Dark Room—hide-and-seek with all the lights turned off. Sohini always made her the first seeker. Anita didn’t dare argue because even back then her friend had a temper. If Sohini was upset, she wouldn’t speak for days and Anita would have to lure her back with little apology notes passed in class. When it was her turn, she stood outside the mirrored doors of the dining room with her eyes closed. More…
On Sundays, there is free time to explore the place that Carl calls home, and I find that I love it quite a bit. I love the weather and the people who sit near the dock. I love my job; it is maybe the thing I love best about this place. Files and documents come and go by way of the shredder, but murder is a task that lasts. It’s nice to have my head in something steady. More…
Hugh wanted to know a lot more about my boss than I did. He wanted to know, for instance, what kind of shampoo my boss used. I have no idea, I told him. “Don’t you look in the shower?” “No, I don’t. What does it matter what kind of shampoo he uses?” I asked. “It says a lot about him. Is it salon shampoo or drugstore?” I shook my head. Hugh had started to smell. More…
Four days after Alissa dropped out of college, she snagged a job at the preppy clothing retailer that made sumptuous cashmere in a rainbow of farmer’s market hues. Persimmon. Morel. Sage. A friend’s brother had worked there the previous summer and he put her in touch with the manager, Mark. More…
In this episode Liz Hynes talks with Chad Harbach about his new novel, The Art of Fielding, exploring themes of mimetic desire, Herman Melville, and male friendship on and off the baseball field. More…
If one noteworthy thing has ever occurred in my hard and insipid life, it was to have been one of the passengers on that extra flight, the one from Boa Vista to São Paulo. Before I go on, I should explain the circumstances, perhaps fortuitous—however much they later appeared to me as part of a series of necessarily interrelated events—that led me to be part of a select group of passengers. More…
At the factory, the truth is that we don’t know what we are making. We construct the parts of the unknown thing throughout the day, and we put them on the belts that take them through the far wall. Each of us knows the shape of her particular piece the way we know the dark behind our own eyelids. Mine is a long, flat strip of metal, three inches wide, that arrives to me straight as a bone. More…
She was Madeline from the beginning. The other women were only pseudonyms: bad puns and palindromes. Everett was embarrassed to be on the site, embarrassed at his own pale face reflected in the monitor as he scrolled anonymously through thousands of photographs. It was a relief to find someone with a real name. My name is Madeline—she said this quite plainly. More…
For a year or so, when our marriage was in trouble but before it was actually over, my husband and I used to go to a sex club in San Bernardino. It was a moldy old place that probably hadn’t changed since it opened in the seventies, a slightly dreadful place that perfectly reflected the state of our marriage, although I was strangely fond of it at the time. More…
Let me spell it out, to avoid any possible further misunderstanding: if, as a private individual, I don’t particularly care to be reachable, or reached, for whatever reason, it’s my prerogative to protect my privacy, not to mention my time and energies, as best I can. Your access to my home address was an accident of circumstance; your use of it in this way might be considered an abuse of privilege More…
I was just about finished throwing the videos into a plastic bag when again the orange phone rang. I rushed back to the booth, picked up, and heard a woman’s voice. I was nearing the age of 19. “I believe my husband just spoke to you about our videotape,” the woman said. “Now I want to send the video to you, to the address here on your catalog.” I said, “Please don’t do that.” More…
At 62, Dick had held five jobs, been fired from all of them, and was now settling nervously into a sixth. If anyone cared to investigate the cause of these curtailments, and few did, they’d have discovered he had not always been wholly to blame, but by the time of the third or fourth blow, he’d grown incompetent almost to gratify expectation. More…
The truth, of course, is that bird watching requires a willed deafness to the inherent tragedy—that bird is good in theory, not practice. It is a vulgar hobby. You must deceive yourself continually. You will never be a bird. You won’t live in the treetops or soar over cliffs or be a graceful message from the gods. Nor will you ever decode that message. It will remain locked and you will go about trying to unlock it in the most superficial ways. More…
I had met Israel once before, several years ago, and never forgot it. I was married at the time, and was going down in an elevator in a building of artists’ studios. He entered on the same floor and stood there beside me. He had killer eyes, huge, jaded soul-sucking eyes, a nice, easy, lazy smile, big thick lashes, and the lips of a real pervert. More…
Zina had been hearing about Cowboy for months, ever since befriending Marina, who gave herself manicures in the lifeguard chair. Unconvincing not only as a lifeguard but as someone who’d consider dipping a toe in the water. Probably hadn’t swum a day in her life. Undoubtedly Yuri’s mistress. The utter disregard for disguise impressed Zina wildly. Friendship sprung from there. More…
She wanted something different. Her mother, Eva, came up with the idea. They wrote to Abram Katz in California, asking him to send a wedding dress—nothing too fancy, but different, preferably blue. They’d housed him, fed him, and so felt only a tinge of guilt at the request. They waited. No reply. We got married in late November, having miscalculated when the leaves change. More…
The hustle began on the long t-shaped table that served as a stage. Whenever someone gave you more than a $1 tip, you gave him all your attention and tried to sell him a split. One split equaled $35 equaled fifteen minutes of conversation on a banquette, which you used to push the next drink. It was a dream of eternal postponement. For $150, a guy could buy us a magnum, served in a curtained back-room. These dates lasted about half an hour. More…
Every summer Ijeoma’s mother-in-law asked her to come to Nigeria to seek a solution to her childlessness. The previous year she had sent Ijeoma a video recording of Nigeria’s latest miracle pastor. The pastor’s name was Jehoshaphat. He had a long, well-groomed beard. He was shown in the video sending women into brief trances by gently blowing air onto their faces. More…
If it hadn’t been for the cast, she wouldn’t have been home when David phoned. If it hadn’t been for the cast, she would have been at work. He told her he was in Tel Aviv, he’d come to Israel for just a week, his office sent him to some conference. Something to do with the Jewish Agency. He said he was wasting away in those lectures and he wanted to see her, and she said okay. More…
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…
