Christian Lorentzen has worked as an editor at US Weekly, the New Leader, Harper’s and the LRB and has edited two volumes of pieces from n+1. He has a newsletter on Substack.
In 1969 Norman Mailer ran for mayor of New York. He called for the city’s secession from the State of New York to become the 51st state; a ban on private cars in Manhattan; free public bicycles; devolution of powers over policing, education, housing and welfare to neighbourhood authorities; a casino on Coney Island or Roosevelt Island to generate tax revenue; and something called...
There’s something confusing about the consensus around Alice Munro. It has to do with the way her critics begin by asserting her goodness, her greatness, her majorness or her bestness, and then quickly adopt a defensive tone, instructing us in ways of seeing as virtues the many things about her writing that might be considered shortcomings. So she writes only short stories, but the stories are richer than most novels. Over a career now in its sixth decade, she’s rehearsed the same themes again and again, but that’s because she’s a master of variation.
I was walking down Great Russell Street a few weeks ago when a young man emerged from a house wearing sandals, khaki trousers, a backwards University of Tennessee baseball cap, and a yellow T-shirt that had FUTURE WORLD LEADERS CONFERENCE emblazoned on it. This, I thought, is why they dislike us: sockless boys from Knoxville asserting their place in the hegemonic order a block from where Marx...
I misaddressed an email yesterday. It was about meeting up on Kingly Street in Soho. It went not to Nick in London but to Nick in Boston. ‘Kingly St?’ Nick replied. ‘It’s motherfuckin’ Patriots’ Day, dude. Don’t forget the struggle, don’t forget the streets.’ I had forgotten all about it. Patriots’ Day is a holiday peculiar to Massachusetts (and its former disconnected appendage, Maine). It marks the battles of Lexington and Concord, the first shots fired on the morning of 19 April 1775, and it’s the start of a week of school holiday. But somehow everything in Boston must be defined in terms of sport, so it really only has one meaning: Marathon Day. I was on Kingly Street when I heard the Boston Marathon had been bombed.
A father is in despair about his daughter’s unhappiness. All Lilly’s friends at school are richer than she is, and one lives in a mansion, with a pet horse, a llama, a luxurious treehouse and an antique merry-go-round. Her own family’s backyard is a mess, and her father knows it. Her birthday request is more than he can afford; his three credit cards are nearly maxed out....
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