From excerpts of a lecture collected in The Poetics of Wrongness, which was published last month by Wave Books. In late January 2013, I told my mother I was going…

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From descriptions of popular Twitter conversations in 2022, as summarized by the company. The topics were archived by whatshappening.online. People think actor Mickey Rourke bears a resemblance to Val Kilmer…

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From an email sent by a manager of an Olive Garden in Overland Park, Kansas. Attention ALL Team Members: Our call-offs are occurring at a staggering rate. From now on,…

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From a disciplinary report produced by the Denver Fire Department in October. Engine 19 of the Denver Fire Department responded to support Denver Police Department officers on a welfare check.…

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From Grotesque Weather and Good People, which was published in June by Black Ocean. Translated from the Korean. Thinking of people makes us avoid them. I think we should even…

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From “Scientomancy, or Divination by Science,” which was published in the Fall 2022/Winter 2023 issue of Salmagundi Magazine. Translated from the Polish. I would like to focus on a special…

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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,…

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From messages sent to Helpdesk.media, a website that answers anonymous questions from Russians. Hi! I am a contract military person. My contract is about to end. I filed my dismissal…

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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…

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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,…

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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…

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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);…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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From Dragons, which will be published in March by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. A fourth grader sees the fox skulking behind the Climatron as something from the rural past, Reynard,…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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