Explore Essays and memoir
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The Beauty Disease
Patricia Hampl
‘Beauty, for my grandmother and my aunts, was divided like a territory into estates, each part governed by a different seignior.’
Full Disclosure
Zoë Heller
‘The speech he gave was bellicose. It was time, he told the people in the conference room, for them to pull their socks up.’
What is Chicago
Lawrence Joseph
‘For all its buildings and skyscrapers and sprawl, Chicago is still a part of, and as open as, the prairies. The lake, ocean-like, is flat and utterly exposed.’
The Bird of Paradise Lost
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
‘Hudson had been a professional collector of birds in the pampas as a young man, employed first by the Smithsonian in the United States.’
Raymond Carver, 1938 to 1988
Tess Gallagher
‘We were married in Reno, Nevada. It was a very Carveresque affair, held in the little Heart of Reno Chapel across from the courthouse. Afterwards we went gambling at Harrah's Club and with every turn of the wheel I won. I couldn't stop winning.’
Il Commento Gastrico
Ian Hamilton
‘In the old days, when a British star went to Italy, he disappeared.’
Borges and Me, and Me
Rodrigo Fresán
‘What would be the point of writing anything if I went down in history as the person who killed Borges?’
