I intend to try Alex Balk’s method of cooking a fucking steak, although I’m pretty sure the first principle of the native Texan’s catechism is “use a grill.” I don’t think you’re even allowed to call it steak in my mother’s house if it wasn’t cooked over an open flame (or maybe chicken-fried). For another tempting pan-cooked variety, see Norman . . .
“For me it had become a concrete wall.” Stephen Emms discovers that he’s fallen out of love with Murakami. (See also.)
“When it’s a cold November in the soul, Melville’s Ishmael may go off to sea, but some of us simply reach for Hardy’s collected poems.” Indeed.
“The current debate places far too much emphasis on Islam as a set of codes and on the Koran as a literal text.” Laila Lalami on the new Inquisition.
Debussy’s opera based on Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” obsessed him in his final years but was left unfinished. Debussy and Poe tries to fill in the gaps.