Get Access to Print and Digital for $23.99 per year.
Subscribe for Full Access

Readings

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

Dashiell, Hamming

From similes used in twentieth-century noir books and films, compiled in The Mysterious Romance of Murder, which was published last May by Cornell University Press. Impressive as an adoring moll…

Read more

Stimulus Package

From the minutes of a meeting of the Boca Raton Planning and Zoning Board held on March 2. ashley cream: Good evening. I am here as a concerned citizen and…

Read more

Groan Banking

From a list of queries and complaints received by the New York City 311 line since 2003, released in March to commemorate its twentieth anniversary. Can you check if my…

Read more

Not

From Phantom Pain Wings, which was published last month by New Directions. Translated from the Korean. I don’t walk without music I don’t wear a slip without lace There’s a…

Read more

No Biggie

From the witness testimony of NCIS special agent John C. Little, given in North Carolina in August 2021 during the detention hearing of Joseph Maurino, a New Jersey national guardsman…

Read more

Book of Lies

From Orphan Bachelors, which will be published this month by Grove Press. Our father’s elder sister arrived with her husband in 1921. We called her Big Aunt. Big Uncle was…

Read more

Compose Yourself

From Easily Slip into Another World, which will be published this month by Knopf. Toward the end of July 1971, I go to see Duke Ellington with his orchestra. This…

Read more

Dirty Pop

From “Chains or Whips? The Cruel Decade and its Aftermath,” which was published in February by The White Review. The decade of cruelty started with low-rise jeans. Of course, no…

Read more

Grace Under Fire

From Ordinary Notes, which was published last month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. At Amiri Baraka’s funeral service, livestreamed from Newark Symphony Hall, a beautiful number and range of people…

Read more

Fatal Attraction

From Tomás Nevinson, which will be published this month by Knopf. Translated from the Spanish. I still didn’t have all the facts—I was waiting for the full reports, which would…

Read more

Benjamin Glutton

From explanations given by centenarians for their longevity, followed by their ages at the time the advice was reported. Smoke fifteen cigarettes a day, 100 Drink one glass of Coors…

Read more

Genius Sidebar

From a hearing held in February to discuss the bail conditions of Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Prosecutors had asked Judge Lewis Kaplan to place…

Read more

Off the Record

From headlines given to letters published by the New York Times between 2009 and 2023. Is It OK to Marry an Amnesiac? Is It OK to Press Your Spouse to…

Read more

All Souls

From All Souls, which will be published in October by Graywolf. Schubert, Schumann said, wrote music as if ‘never in doubt as to how to continue,’ but his notes, conversant…

Read more

Capital Gains Tax

From interviews with former Taliban fighters conducted in Kabul and published by the Afghanistan Analysts Network in February. Translated from the Pashto. Leaving the Taliban’s friendly environment was difficult. There…

Read more

Lots to Lose

From Paved Paradise, which will be published next month by Penguin Press. Parking psychosis is a regular feature of American life. The former NFL safety T. J. Cunningham was killed…

Read more

Revisionist’s History

From an undated entry in The Diaries of Franz Kafka, which was published by Schocken Books in January. Translated from the German. 1. When I think about it, I must…

Read more

Show Don’t Tell

From “Should Writers Talk?,” a discussion that was held in January at the University of Chicago. agnes callard: One of the reasons you give for why writers shouldn’t talk is…

Read more

The Feminine Mistake

From “The Agoraphobic Fantasy of Tradlife,” which was published in the Winter 2023 issue of Dissent. Love is the ultimate value, and love is under threat: That is the rumor…

Read more

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

From “Till One or the Other Gits Back,” which is collected in The Caterpillar Dogs and Other Early Stories, out this month from New Directions. She stood now at the…

Read more

Conspicuous Combustion

From the abstract of “Small Penises and Fast Cars,” a study conducted by researchers at University College London. In this experiment, we manipulated what men believed about their own penis…

Read more

Comparative Literature

From similes used by the critic Dwight Garner in book reviews for the New York Times since 2017. Like frogs run over by a lawn mower Like a goose dementedly…

Read more

Hyperbole Pulpit

From assertions made by current members of Congress. Claimed to not drink alcohol, before being arrested for drunk driving Claimed to be a consultant for Dow Jones & Company because…

Read more

Insider Trading

From a bill proposed in the Massachusetts legislature in January. The Commissioner of the Department of Correction shall establish a bone marrow and organ donation program and a bone marrow…

Read more

Shill to Power

From descriptions of Sam Bankman-Fried included in an article written by Adam Fisher and published by Sequoia Capital, a venture capital firm that invested $150 million in Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency platform…

Read more

At Eloise’s Night Light Lounge

From a new edition of Divine Days, which was published last month in the inaugural volume from Seminary Co-op Offsets, an imprint of Northwestern University Press. That evening, several gifts…

Read more

First Time for Everything

From Our Red Book, a collection of essays and interviews about menstruation, edited by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff. The book was published in November by Simon & Schuster. rachel kauder nalebuff:…

Read more

| View All Issues |

June 2023

Close
“An unexpectedly excellent magazine that stands out amid a homogenized media landscape.” —the New York Times
Subscribe now

Debug