‘In the imagination of strangers there is a small town in America which represents not just itself but the whole country‘.
In the imagination of strangers there is a small town in America which represents not just itself but the whole country. It will have a strip mall and a high school band and a Pancake Day in the fall. It will be known on its Chamber of Commerce website as America’s Hometown.
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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.
‘As many as thirty-five states in the world are thought to have the capacity (if not the wish) to build a nuclear weapon.’
‘My first sight of modern Iraq was a colossal fairy-lit head of Saddam Hussein hurtling out of the darkness, as if from another galaxy of despotism and violence.’
‘I see in an instant what has brought people to the valley for four centuries.’
’In my inferno of solitude, I thought there must be some reason why I was doing what I was doing.‘
‘We decided then to tell each other exactly how a typical fuck played out in our marriages. We couldn’t believe we’d never done this before.’
Fiction by Miranda July.
‘She does not stare at you, but when your eyes meet, she does not look away.’
