From notes taken in the 1970s by Douglas Crimp, an art critic. The notes appear in Before Pictures, a memoir that was published last month by the University of Chicago Press…

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By Ed Skoog, from Run the Red Lights, which was published this month by Copper Canyon Press. Skoog is the author of two previous collections of poetry, including Rough Day…

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By Nicholson Baker, from Substitute, an account of his experiences as a substitute teacher in Maine public schools in 2014. The book was published last month by Blue Rider Press.…

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By Mónica de la Torre, from The Happy End/All Welcome, a collection of poetry that will be published in December by Ugly Duckling Presse. De la Torre is the author…

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From a conversation with Bina48, a robot that was created by Hanson Robotics for Martine Rothblatt, the CEO of United Therapeutics, as a clone of her wife, Bina Rothblatt. The…

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From mistaken reports of animals in distress, compiled over the past year by an animal-rescue shelter in Guernsey.

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From a village board meeting held in June in Mount Prospect, Illinois. Tykables, a company that serves adult-baby diaper lovers, opened a storefront in the village two months earlier. Arlene…

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From a letter written in 1973 by Samuel Beckett to Estelle Parsons, an actress who had requested his thoughts on staging Waiting for Godot with Shelley Winters. The letter appears…

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From the transcript of a staff meeting at RBC, a media company based in Moscow, in July. An audio recording of the meeting was leaked to Meduza, a Russian-language news…

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From a list of 4,432 scenes and objects that Apple's Photos app is able to recognize and classify.

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By Roger Lewinter, from Story of Love in Solitude, a collection of short fiction that was published this month by New Directions. Lewinter, who lives in Switzerland, is the author…

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By Renee Gladman, from Calamities, a collection of linked essays that was published this month by Wave Books. Gladman is the author of eight works of prose, including the novel…

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By Peter Gizzi, from Archeophonics, which was published this month by Wesleyan University Press. Gizzi is the author of seven collections of poetry.

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From testimony given at a grand-jury hearing last year by Sonja Farak, a former chemist at the Massachusetts State Crime Laboratory, in Amherst. In 2014, Farak pleaded guilty to tampering…

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From a patient guide to the AspireAssist, a weight-loss device that was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in June.

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From a list of reference books published worldwide since 1793, compiled by Jack Lynch, a professor at Rutgers University, Newark. Lynch’s most recent book, You Could Look It Up, was…

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By Éric Chevillard, from Music & Literature No. 8. Chevillard is the author of numerous novels, including Prehistoric Times, which appeared in English in 2012. Translated from the French by…

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From a conversation between André Gomez and René Magritte, a Surrealist painter. The interview was conducted in Paris in 1948 for the Radio Suisse Romande and collected in René Magritte:…

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By Jen George, from “Instruction,” which appears in The Babysitter at Rest, a collection of her short fiction that will be published next month by Dorothy.

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