‘Shiny and bright and compact, 'Heartburn’ whirrs along, not so much a novel as an appliance - an appliance whose inner workings are on the fritz.’
So cliquish is the New York media cartel that novels by its members are often assumed to have an intimate cast of characters. ‘Who’s in it?’ the brusque and formidable Philip Rahv would ask when a fiction manuscript landed on his desk at the Partisan Review. (Rahv himself was left smarting whe…
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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.
‘Now and then it can appear that an entire magazine is opening up the silks, searching for a soft place to land.’
‘He tried to think about what sort of person he wanted to be in this world and how he might bring that about.’
Fiction by Brandon Taylor.
‘As evidenced by the Met show, everyone wants to be a bit punk.’
Anouchka Grose on the birth and death and rebirth of punk.
‘He understands he is a container. For music, for movement.’
An excerpt from Meg Howrey’s novel, set in the world of professional ballet.
‘This conflation of hard-nosed realism and bright-eyed idealism has confused the aims of the award.’
