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Readings

Excerpts from the best and most bizarre new books, testimonies, government documents, journals, news reports, speeches, and letters.

Bound and Galleyed

From “Whips and Chains,” which appeared in Issue 11 of The Fence. Back in February 2012, when I was a newly minted marketing executive at Random House U.K., I was…

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Murder, She Wrote

From an archived version of a blog post titled “How to Murder Your Husband,” which was allegedly written in 2011 by Nancy Brophy, who was put on trial in April…

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Gated Community

From reports of people living at airports. A German former pilot spent thirteen days in Viracopos–Campinas International Airport after he was dumped by a woman he met online. An Indian…

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Gap and Erasure

From the April issue of The Brooklyn Rail.   The lumbering bumblebee is out Buttering up its bronze thighs With pollen’d orbs of echinacea. It’s a period piece, a Gap…

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The City That Never Sleeps

From complaints received by New York City’s 311 helpline between February 2021 and February 2022. My neighbor is having loud sex and has kept me up for two days straight.…

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Rags to Reichstag

From a speech given by the Tennessee state senator in April during a debate on a bill to make camping along highways a misdemeanor. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I haven’t…

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Zero Dark Flirty

From promotional materials for YBeU, a beauty and life-coaching business run by Alfreda Scheuer, a former CIA officer who oversaw the interrogation of suspected terrorists during the George W. Bush…

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Game of Life

From an interview with Marcel, a chess player in New York City’s Washington Square Park, published in April on CAFÉ ANNE, Kadet’s website. This game has cost me a couple…

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Fear and Loathing in Moscow

From “In Moscow, Russians Face the Vertigo of War,” which was reported from Moscow and published in March by L’Obs. The names of some subjects have been changed by the…

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Extremely Loud and Incredibly Gauche

From descriptions of trips hosted by Young Pioneer Tours, which offers vacations to “destinations your mother would rather you stay away from.” south sudan budget tour The most affordable tour…

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Time Wasting

From Chronicle of a Hunger Striker, which is forthcoming from Deep Vellum. Sentsov was arrested in 2014 for protesting the Russian annexation of his native Crimea, and spent five years…

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Prime Factors

From A Divine Language, which will be published next month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1. Prime numbers are those that can be divided cleanly only by themselves and by…

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Terms of Endearment

From Companion Piece, a novel, which was published last month by Pantheon. Surface v depth: and if you said someone was light-timbered it meant they were a weakling, I told…

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Loss in Translation

From “Unspeakable Pain,” which was published in the Spring 2022 issue of The Yale Review. “I am Dr. Smith,” I say. “I am Dr. Jones.” For five hours a day,…

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Life, Inc.

From “Corporate Insecthood,” a study conducted by Nina Strohminger and Matthew Jordan, which will be published next month in Cognition. Participants were asked to rank various corporations and organizations on…

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Not Terrorized No

In memory of Marisela Escobedo, a Mexican activist who was assassinated in 2010 while protesting the acquittal of Sergio Rafael Barraza Bocanegra, who had confessed to murdering Escobedo’s teenage daughter.…

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Chew Your Own Adventure

From Letter to the Americans, which was written in 1949 after a visit to New York City. It will be published for the first time in English this month by…

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Naming Contentions

From a list of names that are banned around the world, collected by USBirthCertificates.com. Linda (Saudi Arabia) Sarah (Morocco) Judas (Switzerland) Osama bin Laden (Germany) Devil (Japan) Monkey (Denmark) Thor…

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Untitled

The poem, which is dated March 3, 1937, appears in Issue 51 of Talisman: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Politics. Mandelstam (1891–1938) was a Russian poet who was arrested…

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An Idiom Abroad

From a series of lists compiled in Euphemisms That Get on My You-Know-Whats, which was published in November by Andrews McMeel Publishing. raining cats and dogs Raining old ladies and…

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More of a Comment than a Question

From comments sent to public school boards in the United States since last year. You are forcing them to wear masks for no reason in this world other than control.…

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Brave and Rational

From a series of diary entries from Kyiv, Ukraine, published daily on isolarii.com. february 24: I woke up early to see eight unanswered calls on my phone. It was my…

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The Sins of the Fathers

From things for which Roman Catholic popes have apologized. Colonialism Complicity in the slave trade Passivity during the Holocaust The Inquisition Systemic sexual abuse Missionaries in China Sins against the…

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Mistaking Identity

From Liberalism and Its Discontents, which will be published this month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Modern democracies are facing a deep cognitive crisis. For many years now, societies have…

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Office Politics

From London-rose, which was published last month by Semiotext(e). I’m embarrassed by the bitterness I am feeling. It’s as if I had been sipping poison for the past ten years…

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All in the Family

From “Family Capitalism and the Small Business Insurrection,” which was published in the Winter 2022 issue of Dissent. Progressives have struggled to comprehend the foundations of the far right’s continuing…

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Peak Performance

From “Man Mountain,” a short story, which was published last month in the inaugural issue of Astra Magazine. I cannot say I fully understood where it came from, but I…

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Family Story

From A Fierce Green Place, a poetry collection, which will be published next month by New Directions. My father fair with his straight nose and hair kept chickens and a…

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July 2022

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