Edmund Wilson, the well-known writer, toured Chicago in 1932 and found a “sea of misery.”
Archive for September, 2011
Our neighborhood was never the same after Misty Rhodes and her family moved in across the street.
A single drop of water changes the ocean.
“I still use a manual typewriter (a 1953 Underwood portable, in a robin’s-egg blue) because the soft pip-pip-pip of the typing of keys on a computer keyboard doesn’t quite fit with my sense of what writing sounds like. I need the hard metal clack, and I need those keys to sometimes catch so I can reach in and untangle them, turning my fingertips inky. Without slapping the return or turning the cylinder to release the paper with a sharp whip, without all that minor havoc, I feel I’ve paid no respect to the dead. What good is an obituary if it can be written so peaceably, so undisturbingly, in the dark of night?”
The Cross house was twenty paces away and the proximity and sight of it made Gary Soneji’s skin prickle. It was Victorian-style, white-shingled, and extremely well kept. As Soneji stared across Fifth Street, he slowly bared his teeth in a sneer that could have passed for a smile. This was perfect. He had come here to murder Alex Cross and his family.
I never slept with the president. I did sleep with the former president. In fact, I slept with three of them, all at once, on Air Force One. Actually, it was more like a slumber party, which sounds even more bizarre.
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
More than a few residents of Wynette, Texas, thought Ted Beaudine was marrying beneath himself. It wasn’t as if the bride’s mother was “still” the president of the United States. Cornelia Jorik had been out of office for over a year. And Ted Beaudine was, after all, Ted
Beaudine.
G.B.’s inauguration cost $25 million, the most expensive one in U.S. history. But you have to celebrate democracy. Without rites and ceremonies we’re nothing but a bunch of apes in fancy outfits.
When Randi died, my family went haywire: one by one we shorted out. My father, a dignified cardiologist, took to drinking and belligerence. My mother’s mannered calm gave way to hysteria. I became pale and inept and forgot how to hold conversations.
