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Roger seemed eager to charm, but I was not charmed. I felt spotlighted by his attentiveness, his anticipation of what I might want—another helping of fava bean salad, more water, an extra napkin when I dropped a chunk of braised pork on my skirt. I would say something self-deprecating, and he’d reg…

We were students of literature but we didn’t read in order to become clever and pass our exams with the highest commendations – we read in order to come to life. We were supremely adept at detecting metaphors, signs, analogies, portents – in books, and in our immediate realities. We confused life w…

[...] Dale was very sweaty, I didn’t like that I didn’t want it dripping on me – was he enjoying it? – I don’t know I don’t know what it must feel like to be right the way inside a woman who likes you a great deal but really doesn’t want you to be doing that and has said so and isn’t moving a singl…

[...] Graham Greene. Gore Vidal. Nabokov. E. M. Forster. So many men for the simple reason I wanted to find out about men, about the world they lived in and the kinds of things they got up to in that world, the kinds of things too that they thought about as they drifted out of train stations, hung …

[...] Later that same year I went to New York and various people at a party asked me what had I been reading lately and when I said Anaïs Nin many of them were noticeably thrown off guard – Nin was not à la mode and hadn’t been for aeons – they had nothing up their sleeve at all to say in response …