We’d arranged to meet under the High Line,
Outside the Whitney; I was running down from
This photo shoot in Chelsea so I had
My clothes stuffed into a hiking backpack
And I was naked except for stilettos.
Felix was coming from choir practice.
He was tall, very thin, ginger-nut hair,
A two-vest situation, naked below the knees.
Hi, I said, glistening from the running;
You must be J.’s friend. Shall we fuck?
“The Metro had its finger on the pulse of Parisian life—or, at least, the life that expats mythologized.”
“Floating through the aisles in Iowa Walmart, I couldn’t stop listing things—camo baseball cap, Dustbuster, toilet brush—muttering a late-capitalist rosary: hail Big Mouth Billy Bass full of grace.”
Visiting Toni Morrison: Sites of Memory, on exhibit at Princeton University’s Firestone Library, is like going to a sauna.
“I’ve never been married, and I’ve bought my wedding dress.”
“I have a $10 bill, and buying things in cash these days makes me feel like I’m getting it for free.”
“Isabel, Chloé, Alaïa, Rejina. I could be anyone.”
When Sondheim, to my astonishment, wrote back, he said that although he no longer had a regular solving practice, he counted introducing American readers to cryptic crosswords among the great achievements of his life.
Ever since we’ve had language, we’ve played games with words.
I returned to Ramona Quimby for nostalgia. What I found was even better: a mystery.
Here’s an absolutely free, no-shipping-required, Paris Review crossword puzzle.
Ever since we’ve had language, we’ve played games with words.
Take your mind off all the ambient anxiety with a ‘Paris Review’–themed crossword.
Writing the SparkNotes for Go Set a Watchman.
ContextThe summer when I was eight, I read two books: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and To Kill a Mockingbird. My copy of Mockingbird was a cheap lilac paperback. Its cover featured the knot of a tree with a …
Adventures in typography.I was a teenage font addict. On Microsoft Word I’d lovingly scroll through the drop-down font menu: Avenir Book, Baskerville, Goudy, Goudy Old Style. For every story or poem I started to write, I first spent hours choosing …
“Eeny, meeny, miny, mo” and the ambiguous history of counting-out rhymes.Eeny, meeny, miny, mo
Catch a tiger by the toe
If he hollers, let him go
Eeny meeny miny mo
“Eeny meeny miny mo” is one of those rhymes that’s ingrained in our cultural l…