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The spy novel is silly, when it isn’t claustrophobic; urgent, but with an urgency severed from any link to the various impending geopolitical alarms — German invasion, Soviet infiltration, Chinese technological advancement, terrorist havoc — that the genre’s history continually sounds. There is som…

American spies are naïfs or pallid sidekicks

Lately the acting in TV commercials has gotten really good. The other night I saw an ad for some company that helps people get rid of timeshares they don’t want anymore and I thought, Man, that was great, really affecting. That could have been an episode of Togetherness on HBO, if that was still …

A GROWING PERCENTAGE of my texts were from men who wanted to “stay in touch.” We had inside jokes, we sent each other articles about things we’d discussed on our dates, we even started telling each another about other dates we’d been on, commiserating about what the app was doing to our minds.

T…

I wasn’t immune to finding power sexy. I’d gone out with men because I was impressed by their jobs, thought about leaving men and then remembered their jobs. I told myself that this wasn’t a shallow train of thought, it was actually a tribute to a man’s character: the position he held said somethin…