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[...] “Is God Dead?” If the question, put this way, is less in vogue now, Camus still describes so well the way the world feels when it rubs up against our nostalgia for the old meanings: silent. And empty; the “God-shaped hole,” we called it in Sunday school, assuming this must be what the hearts …

Maybe it could be a problem of narrative. I was living a story and now the story seems to have stopped and I don’t really care, that’s what it feels like. Like an old ship rusting in a bay somewhere. Or maybe more accurately, just a car accident. I’ve come to a stop, metaphorically. That’s what it …

Here, unlike on the Boardwalk, everything is real. Here everything is both ghostly and real. Vacant houses. Apartments boarded up to protect against squatters. Eviction and foreclosure papers flap from the doors like tongues. NOTICE TO CEASE, NOTICE TO QUIT, papers keeping the sun out of the window…

Every day, taking the elevator up and down for cig breaks, I’d study these murals — I’d try to resist their calliope charms.

Whether consciously or not, Obama crafted a set of political narratives aimed at this new electoral coalition. His story beautifully embodied the aspirations of the upwardly mobile, white and black, who saw in themselves and their children the dream of educational achievement and professional succe…