Posted in READER
Commencement Speech
" So, here you are at last, class of 2010, about to graduate. But from what? "
Category: Writing
Posted in READER
Norman Mailer: The Angry Young Novelist in America
" Norman Mailer’s latest production, Advertisements for Myself, is a painful book to read not because the author is so grimly determined to unburden himself of all his grievances and resentments... "
Posted in READER
A Boy’s Will: Excerpts
"
Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year. "
Posted in READER
How to Treat a Woman
"
hips, thighs, hindquarters
grapefruits in grocery bags
skin cells "
Posted in READER
How to Die in America
"
Slip away
go to the end of the line and keep going
make sure you’re alone
and unknown "
Posted in READER
“The Play’s the Thing”: A Polemic
" Though other literary forms wax and wane, the novel, short story, diary, epic and such forever suffering favor or oblivion at the hands of the reading public, plays, it seems, are always out of fashion... "
Posted in READER
Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir
" My life, or career, in Greenwich Village began when Sheri Donatti invited me to move in with her. "
Posted in READER
A Portrait of the Hipster
" As he was the illegitimate son of the Lost Generation, the hipster was really nowhere. And, just as amputees often seem to localize their strongest sensations in the missing limb, so the hipster longed, from the very beginning, to be somewhere. "
Posted in READER
Shakespeare
" Auden gave the following mimeographed final examination in his Saturday afternoon class for the students taking the course for credit in the fall term. Part B of the examination, which Ansen wrote in by hand with the comment “unexpected,” was dictated by Auden in class. "