“The French have a horror of the smell of cooking food, whereas Americans find it appetizing; in the nineteenth century the first French Rothschild went so far in this aversion as to have the food brought from the kitchen to the dining room on an odourless, because underground, train.” –Edmund White, The Flaneur (I couldn’t […]
Read More Fetishes: Annotated BibliographyI had a boyfriend who refused to read “Bartleby the Scrivener.” Over and over again he refused. Some people get that. Some people don’t. I’m in a Melville mood lately. Forgive me. I was at Silver Dollar City last weekend. The weather was perfect, and people were making things with their hands. If I were […]
Read More WhalingThe last time I was in print this much, Clinton was president. Taxes were high, and the living was easy. I had a little underground newspaper in high school, and it was almost an ideal gig. Writing my diatribes and little reviews, then copying it with babysitting money, and leaving copies in the bathroom and […]
Read More AnonymousWithout gooey, wet music, nonfiction can get dry and flaky. Its author may also become too fact-heavy, which feels sort of like having eaten too much white rice. Tonight I read a survival strategy of a favorite writer: listen to opera when you write nonfiction. Makes sense. They’re cranking out the same goddamn “La Boheme,” […]
Read More Butterfly
