O yes. Also whatever brand of frozen manicotti we used to have on Fridays (Catholics), with jarred Ragu spaghetti sauce. My mother was actually a very good cook, but she succumbed to the siren song of convenience on occasion. And we were very thrifty, so "ordering out" was never an option.
Chef Boyardee ravioli in a can.
Voted most likely in his high school class to succeed. Which he did, just in a fashion no one else could possibly have predicted.
"There was altogether too much candour in married life; it was an indelicate modern idea, and frequently led to upsets in a household, if not divorce . . . ."
Muriel Spark, MEMENTO MORI.
As a side note to this eloquent and infuriating piece: How long before George Scialabba finally get his due as our most important and genuinely independent intellectual voice?
The very wealthy/rich simply believe that they are unique and not human at all. In case you need a reminder, this is a good one.
The only possible consequence could be doled out by their own peer group, not by any force on earth.
Looking forward to my egg salad sadwiches day after day after day . . . . Of all the cluless tools servilely serving this administration, this pudding-faced pudding brain takes the eggy cake.
If I were still a working editor, I would commission a novel on this very subject. Katherine Anne Porter, eat your heart out! Title: A REALLY UNFUN THING I WILL NEVER DO AGAIN.
The first twelve years of my education were spent in Catholic Indoctrination Centers, formerly known as "Schools."
It's pretty much a fact that Brockman's client list skewed very heavily male; I actually cannot name a woman he represented at this moment, although I know he had female clients. Some have seen this as part of a larger misogynistic project and they may well be right.
airmail.news/issues/2026-...
Trump claims that Pope Leo is soft on crime.So was Jesus. Remember he told the penitent "good" thief who was being crucified to his right that "today you will be with me in paradise." But Trump hasn't read the Gospel of Luke lately, I'm guessing. (Note that Christ's head inclines to the right.)
What a gal. Stefanik gets singled out by Trump for very special and serial humiliations and she just keeps coming back for more and more of it. She'll be working out of a law office in an upstate strip mall in a few years, doing closings and DUIs.
I thought he was fading, but in fact Richard Hell is a real survivor, and he is having a very fine late act by way of having always been true to his particular style and vision.
Sucks to be a Hachette editor or copyeditor for sure. " Of course we value your work . . ." as the pink slip arrives.
Yup. Rafi, btw, was the most unwordly author I ever worked with and that is really saying something. I loved his book so much.
Oh, for Christ's sake, Donnie, you grew up in fucking QUEENS! This is like saying you never heard of a deli or a dry cleaners or a candy store.
Okay, I surrender, I'l l get it from our library. Feeling kinda bullied about this and the book seems from a distance like one written for critics first and maybe only. But gotta keep an open mind.
Imagine being its editor -- which I was. A truly transcendent experience, and it helped that Don DeLillo is, on top of being a literary genius, a genuinely great guy.
So I actually edited that book -- a real adventure. I guess there were more than a couple of jazz cats in the book -- Billy Cobham, maybe? -- but my sense of this is fuzzy.
Excellent call!
Ragtime and Libra.
I'm reading Muriel Spark's bleakly hilarious MEMENTO MORI. At my age it really puts you in . . . a mood. Oldies looking at all the other oldies, thinking, you really do look old. Heh.
More relevant than ever.
I can tell you that nobody at Doubleday, where I worked, blames me in the least. Making money from that book would feel like getting a large inheritance from an uncle you despise.
I'm thinking that the best rejection of my editorial career was when I turned down HILLBILLY ELEGY in manuscript. Me so proud!
( It wasn't badly written at all, I just didn't like how he portrayed his mother and other family members. An early taste of his momumental assholery.)
Of all the things I am looking forward to not reading or listenting to, the inevitable podcast interview of J. D. Vance by Ross Douthat about his book about being Catholic is the most not looking forward-est to. Guys until you learn the altar boy responses to the Latin mass, STFU please.
"As clueless and dumb as a foundation executive" is a phrase I'll be using very soon.
Colson Whitehead, the last sane man on earth, and also the most delighful.