draw up a map of the welter and trash

Monroe's van-dweller is a libertine solipsist, chasing a life unmoored by social obligation

My purpose was not to get information for a jeremiad against tech and Hollywood’s baleful impact on American writing. It was to try to get paid.

a dramatic illustration of the enervation of American journalism in the last couple of decades

These editors asking you to rip the yarn never talk about politics beyond a possible desultory nod toward wanting stories from writers of “diverse backgrounds.” They do not talk about voice or literary style.

As the exigencies of climate change begin to bear down on the West, the story of Butte becomes particularly important. A place that had so much wealth, whose land and people gave so much of themselves to the world, was left to clean up an impossible mess.

It’s an equal feat, traversing registers: the droll, meditative equanimity of his fiction, and the ardor, sometimes anger, of his nonfiction.

they returned to redeem their collateral eight of ten times, a ludicrous claim I later learned was bruited by scheming brokers regardless of region.

My first day on the job was as I expected: business was good. A post-crash malaise had fomented the rural poor’s already healthy distrust of the banking system, and, anyway, many clients were among the longstanding unbanked

This student mother had an ebullient, infectious, even defiant personality that softened the pawnbrokers.