The Past is the place where anti-Semitism and racism and misogyny were woven into the very warp and weft of literature
Even when I was a little kid, lying on my tummy, flipping through the LIFE photo book, I recognized something in these men, something different. Something that made them subject to different rules than the rest of the adults were following.
We want the asshole to cross the line, to break the rul…
[...]In an interview with Vanity Fair, Wainwright said: “Married and the father of two small children, I was never home, drunk a good deal of the time, and apparently felt it necessary to sleep with every waitress in North America and the British Isles. But guess what. All these beans have been spi…
Did you ever know a genius? I knew one, and she spiraled into schizophrenia. And then I knew another, and he was the most regulated person I ever met—his rules for himself a kind of bulwark against the chaos inside of him.
I didn’t see it at the time, but this “I” was a reaching for an authentic, maybe even heartfelt, response to the work. A desire to reflect on the page the emotions wrought in me by the work, with an understanding that my emotions, my experience, are not yours, and yours are not mine.
