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Readings

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

Whisky Lullaby

From “Majed,” which appears in Elsewhere, Home, a collection that will be published next month by Black Cat. Aboulela is a novelist and playwright and was the first recipient of…

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Smithereens

From “I’ll Swallow Your Dreams,” which appears in Good Will Come From the Sea, a collection that will be published in February by Archipelago. Ikonomou’s other collections include The Woman…

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People Like Me

From Black Is the Body, which will be published in February by Knopf. Bernard is a professor of English and critical race and ethnic studies at the University of Vermont,…

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Box-Seat Drivers

From complaint letters addressed to the New York Philharmonic and subsequent responses, stored in the orchestra’s archive. The letters are dated from 1952–1953. Dimitri Mitropoulos was the music director of…

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I Flirted with the Women

From To Float in the Space Between: A Life and Work in Conversation with the Life and Work of Etheridge Knight, which was published in September by Wave Books. Hayes’s…

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Literary Agents

From descriptions of writers included in FBI surveillance reports. The files were published this year by MIT Press. The collection, Writers Under Surveillance, was edited by JPat Brown, B.C.D. Lipton,…

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Bad Faith Arguments

From explanations given by priests as to why sexual abuse was acceptable, as described in Pennsylvania’s “Fortieth Statewide Investigating Grand Jury Report.” The report, which was released in August, examines…

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The Present is Constant Elegy

From a manuscript in progress that will be published by Wesleyan University Press in 2020. Those years when I was alive, I lived the era of the fast car. There…

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“Mistral-sculpted Snow, Mont Ventoux”

“Mistral-sculpted Snow, Mont Ventoux,” a photograph by Rachel Cobb, whose monograph Mistral: The Legendary Wind of Provence was published last month by Damiani. Cobb’s work is on view this month…

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Reitscape

Reitscape, a mixed-media artwork by Alison Elizabeth Taylor, whose work is on view this month at John Michael Kohler Arts Center, in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. © The artist. Courtesy James Cohan…

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Big Bend Border Bloom

Big Bend Border Bloom, a painting by Rosson Crow, whose work was on view last year at Honor Fraser Gallery, in Los Angeles. Courtesy the artist and Honor Fraser Gallery,…

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Untitled XXIII and Untitled XXVII

Untitled XXIII and Untitled XXVII, paintings by Merikokeb Berhanu, whose work was on view in September at FNB Joburg Art Fair, in Johannesburg. Courtesy the artist and Addis Fine Art…

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Ethereal Desire

Ethereal Desire, a mixed-media artwork by YoAhn Han, whose work was on view in August at Chase Young Gallery, in Boston. Courtesy the artist and Chase Young Gallery, Boston.

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A Divine Pat

From Professor at Large, which was published last month by Cornell University Press. It must have seemed some kind of risk to request a sermon from a man once so…

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Bad Boys

From behaviors alleged at trial to have been committed by a unit of Baltimore police officers in the line of duty. The officers were convicted this year of robbery and…

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Woman with the Beauty Spot

From A Rebel in Gaza, published last month by DoppelHouse Press. Translated from the French by Mike Mitchell. Among the memories I brought back home is a meeting with our…

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Ow That’s What I Call Music

From songs selected by US interrogators to be played repeatedly at maximum volume for inmates at detention centers around the world, including at Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Mosul.…

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A Chicken in Every Pot

From Workers’ Tales, a collection of British socialist fairy tales from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, edited by Michael Rosen and published last month by Princeton University Press.…

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Train Dreams

From Love in the New Millennium, a novel that was published this month by Yale University Press. Can Xue is the pseudonym of Deng Xiaohua, who previously worked as a…

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21 Grahams

From descriptions of Donald Trump, stated between 2015 and 2018, by Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina. A race-baiting, xenophobic bigotThe Islamic State’s “man of the year”The death…

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Arch

Arch, a painting by Barbara Takenaga, whose work was on view in October at DC Moore Gallery, in New York City. Courtesy the artist and DC Moore Gallery, New York…

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A Strange Hour

A Strange Hour, a painting by Amy Bennett, whose work was on view in April at Richard Heller Gallery, in Santa Monica, California. Courtesy the artist and Richard Heller Gallery,…

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“Transformed Agricultural Machine, Kayak Road Sign Facing Highway 90, Hula Valley”

“Transformed Agricultural Machine, Kayak Road Sign Facing Highway 90, Hula Valley,” a photograph by Roei Greenberg, whose work was on view in August at Aperture Gallery, in New York City.…

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A Dream

By Christopher Nealon, from “The Shore,” a manuscript in progress. For Saba Mahmood. Then I gave it upI gave up thinking that the song I heard was the song of…

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Foresight

By Rae Armantrout, from End Quote, a poetry collection that will be published by Wesleyan University Press in 2020.     1The way we gatherat the window, pointing with funereal…

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“Ça Va Aller #3”

“Ça Va Aller #3,” an embroidered photograph by Joana Choumali, whose work was on view in May at 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, in Brooklyn, New York. Courtesy the artist…

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“Dictyota dichotoma, in the young state; and in fruit”

“Dictyota dichotoma, in the young state; and in fruit,” a cyanotype by Anna Atkins, c. 1850, from her book Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, Part XI. Atkins’s work is…

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Red Letter Days

From Issue 23 of The Fabulist, published by Aesop to coincide with the Serpentine Galleries’ 2018 Serpentine Pavilion, which is on view through October 7 in London. My first encounter…

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January 2019

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