From “On Waitressing,” which was published in September by The Stinging Fly. Before I was eighteen, I found talking very difficult. I was a really shy kid. I lacked ease,…
From The Birthday Party, which was published last month by Transit Books. Translated from the French. Tonight, like almost every night, he hears steps on the stairs as he nods…
From The Wounded Age and Eastern Tales, which was published in January by New York Review Books. Translated from the Turkish. On this mountain where God left you all alone,…
From a 1992 letter written by John le Carré (David John Moore Cornwell) to Philip Roth, sent after le Carré read a draft of Roth’s Operation Shylock. The letter is…
From the fifth edition of Garner’s Modern English Usage, which was published in November by Oxford University Press. profanity. For the definitive works, see John McWhorter, Nine Nasty Words (2021);…
From “The Men behind the Girl behind the Man behind the Gun,” which appeared in the May 2022 edition of the Journal of the History of Sexuality. In his 1919…
From reasons people have given for calling in bomb threats across the United States since 2016. Because a pizzeria in Philadelphia wouldn’t feed the Astros during the World Series Because…
From The Last Pomegranate Tree, which was published this month by Archipelago Books. Translated from the Kurdish. One evening, Muhammad the Glass-Hearted sets off for a meeting with an antique…
From The Half Known Life, which will be published this month by Riverhead Books. Four hours in Iran, and already I was having to rethink almost everything. The local guide…
From “Sitting-Down Literature,” which was written in 1970 and is included in The Written World and the Unwritten World, out this month from Mariner Books. Translated from the Italian. Sitting…
From What Have You Left Behind?, which will be published next month by Fitzcarraldo Editions. This account was given by Fatima Mohammed Salam, whose husband was killed in 2015 following…
From a recruitment speech given at a Russian prison by the leader of the Wagner Group, a mercenary company that operates as a proxy for the Russian government. Footage of…
From “Save Penn Station,” which was published in Issue 31 of the New York Review of Architecture. “Hellhole” was the word that New York governor Kathy Hochul used for the…
From an October meeting held during the trial of Paul Bellar, Joseph Morrison, and Pete Musico in Michigan’s Fourth Circuit Court. The men were accused of assisting in a plot…
From actions people have publicly defended with the phrase “hindsight is twenty-twenty.” Getting drunk during an interview with Playboy magazine Failing to complete a two-point conversion against the Wilcox High…
From an announcement made to passengers by a pilot for Southwest Airlines in August. So here’s the deal: If this continues while we’re on the ground, I’m going to have…
From a press conference held by the New York City mayor’s office in October. commissioner jessica tisch: Good afternoon. It is an exciting day because we are about to do…
A Ukrainian artillery shell inscribed with a message paid for by an American donor. Other messages purchased by Americans include: rest in piss orcs, this one’s a gay bomb, does…
From a class-action lawsuit filed in September against T.W. Garner Food Company, the North Carolina–based manufacturer of Texas Pete hot sauce. In the United States, the most common style of…
From the 9/11-themed menu of The Clubhouse, a restaurant in Stafford County, Virginia. The menu was discontinued in September. pentagon pie: Chocolate silk, $4 freedom flounder: Grilled filet of sole…
From “Sentience and Sensibility,” which was published in the September/October issue of The Baffler. It was all too easy to dismiss the Washington Post story about Blake Lemoine—the Google engineer…
From his memoir Come Back in September, which was published in October by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1. My boss, Fran, was hoping to publish Sterling Brown’s collected poems. She…
From unsolicited letters sent to Aileen Cannon, a federal judge in the Southern District of Florida, after she announced that she would appoint a special master to review documents removed…
From an interview with the critic and historian Greg Tate, conducted for Ain’t But a Few of Us, a collection of conversations with black jazz critics, edited by Willard Jenkins,…
From “Rose-Colored Glasses,” which was published in the Winter 2022 issue of Raritan. Long gray hair shredded by the cold demiwind funneling up through the village, curving up and around…
From a conversation between Martha Stewart and Chelsea Handler, which took place in July on Handler’s podcast Dear Chelsea. chelsea handler: What’s going on in your love life? martha stewart:…
From headlines published in the Opinion section of the New York Times since 2011. I’m a New York City Liberal I’m a Democrat and a Feminist I Work for Midwestern…
From The Writing of an Hour, a poetry collection, which was published in March by Wesleyan University Press. A bouquet of twigs and moss and a hard orange burst of…