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?
“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…