Activity

[...] Watching her alternate between naked woundedness and vehemence, I was reminded of Louise Glück’s description of the aspiring poet’s debased yearning — her “adamant need which makes it possible to endure every form of failure.” The harshness of that failure is as little veiled by Julie’s face …

[...] "Folks," the tour guide urged, "just sit back and drink it in." But that which can be drunk can also drown. Enid had slept for six of the previous fifty-five hours, and even as Sylvia thanked her for inviting her along she found she had no energy for touring. The Astors and the Vanderbilts, t…

It was true that Al had asked her to move the jars and magazines, and there was probably a word for the way she'd stepped around those jars and magazines for the last eleven days, often nearly stumbling on them; maybe a psychiatric word with many syllables or maybe a simple word like "spite." But i…

On the morning of Chip's conception she'd merely looked like she was shamming sleep, but on the morning of Denise's, seven years later, she really was pretending. Alfred in middle age had invited such venial deceptions. A decade-plus of marriage had turned him into one of the overly civilized preda…

To the boardinghouse a few years after the war came a young steel engineer newly transferred to St. Jude to manage a foundry. He was a full-lipped thick-haired well- muscled boy in a man's shape and a man's suits. The suits were themselves luxuriantly pleated wool beauties. Once or twice every nigh…