In Berlin the week before last, my friend Jessa mentioned that people on public transit there are completely okay with staring. It’s not just fine to stare, she said; it’s expected. If you don’t look at people, you’re the weird one. For me, longtime rider of the New York City subway that I am, this idea was hard to wrap . . .
As a rule I don’t duplicate posts from my Tumblr, but this is important enough to make an exception. If you’re able, I hope you’ll come out this Saturday to the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library for the Read-In to protest the Mayor’s enormous proposed library budget cuts, which if enacted would effectively dismantle the New York, Queens, . . .
The New York Times Magazine asked some writers and critics, including me, which 2011 novel they’d have given the Pulitzer to. I said Mat Johnson’s Pym.
I leave for Berlin and Amsterdam a week from today and meanwhile am slammed at work-work and with other work, so I keep not being able to post any of the things I intend to write here. But for the first time since my college days, I’ve been keeping a journal. Actually, I’ve been keeping journals, as in many, on . . .