‘Mitchell's writing is a blueprint for a New York which was then disappearing and is now almost lost.’
On December 19, 1970 the writer Joseph Mitchell crossed the Hudson River from Manhattan to scavenge in the condemned Hoboken Ferryhouse. Its windows were knocked out, the paint was peeling and the tin roof rolled back on itself. Broken glass, old newspapers, rags and trash covered the floors. Mitche…
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‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
‘The last issue of Granta celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary and retraced a little of its pre-1979 history as a magazine for and by the students of Cambridge University.’
’She met my father in Texas and then they moved north, where I was born in Cincinnati.‘
‘Chinechelum said little as her mother drove her to the airport.’
‘He'll be ruthless with himself in his pursuit of boundless health to avoid his mother's fate: Mental death.’
‘That single moment’s intensity hasn’t been matched in my life before or since. A woman who I didn’t know has chosen to accept me, in body and mind.’
