TBR

The recent Salman Rushdie sighting led me to this BBC take, and The Chronicle of Higher Education's article on the New York Intellectuals sent me googling all the way back to Irving Howe in 1969.

Thirty-three years later

"So, it's you. Here you are."

Anachronistic

"Something that's old-fashioned and maybe a little out of place is anachronistic, like a clunky black rotary-dial telephone sitting on a desk beside a sleek new smart-phone (or whatever the new technology is when you read this)."

~~ from Vocabulary.com

Rabbit at McDonald's

"[Roy] likes to pour salt out of the shaker until he has a heap and then rub the French fries in it, one by one. The French fries and about a pound of salt are all the kid eats; Harry finishes his Big Mac for him, even though he doesn't much care for all the Technicolor glop McDonald's puts on everything—pure chemicals. Whatever happened to the old-fashioned plain hamburger? Gone wherever the Chiclet went."

~~ from Rabbit at Rest by John Updike

Barth is dead

Long live The Sot-Weed Factor.

Eviction Experts

I read and appreciated Mya Frazier's "The Eviction Experts" along with Lauren Oyler's "Dance Factory" from Harper's Magazine's April 2024 print issue.