Peter Schmader

“We started out reasonably . . .”

Bari Weiss Signs Huge Deal To Usher CBS News Into Its Vichy Era | Defector On Monday, newly appointed Paramount CEO David Ellison announced that his company had acquired the Free Press, the smirking blood-and-soil blog founded and run by former New York Times hall monitor Ba...

“Now that . . . Weiss has taken one of the most powerful positions in American news, the richest people in the world will have taken big steps toward ushering in the toothless, acquiescent future of mainstream media they have always wanted.” @redford.bsky.social

Glowworms In the punt on the river in the cave, beneath the dim light of glowing worms, it was thoughts of my own death that consumed me.

“That’s the thing about your own death—you can hold the truth of it for only a few minutes, and then it reverts back into abstraction.”—Ann Patchett

Encounters — Ghost Parachute When I was in my twenties and went through a breakup and didn’t hate the person, I harbored what I’d call the “nursing home” fantasy. I’d imagine running into my ex in the wallpapered halls of an assi...

How could I have known that I would wait till now for this, from @aimee-bender.bsky.social? That is the beauty of it: “Maybe we would get in the exact same fights in the nursing home, this time further humiliated by the realization that neither of us had grown at all.”

‘You will be astonished.’—Miss Brodie

Into the Dark Heart of a Novelist Who Was ‘Something of a Witch’

“‘Somehow things happened, odd things, when Muriel was around,’ said Shirley Hazzard . . .”—from the review by @alexandrajacobs.bsky.social

(And I’m happy that @NewYorker gives links in the piece, including a link to an E. B. White Comment, another to a Phyllis McGinley poem [hello, Julie; are you walking with Charlie?], and still another to the McKelway, Margaret Case Harriman six-parter on Winchell.)

“His general advice to people attempting to craft humane, precise, and literate prose has scarcely aged, and his own bracing style still informs and delights.”

The Autocrat of English Usage Henry W. Fowler believed he knew how sentences should read—and his judgments have shaped The New Yorker’s style for a century.

“If Oxford is interested in extracting a bit more profit out of Fowler’s work, it might consider putting together a (highly) abridged version, called something like ‘Fowler on Writing.’—Ben Yagoda

Ian McEwan Knows History Is an Imperfect Judge

“We were in the sitting room of his handsome mews house in central London, near the Charles Dickens Museum, on an autumn day of melancholy sunniness.”—Sarah Lyall

“even a seventy-million-trick pony is still a trick pony, and much of what once seemed clever in his canon now seems tiresome.”

“The first page of ‘Shadow Ticket’ is a master class in skills many writers won’t master in a lifetime: tone, rhythm, pacing, how to establish a character, how to prime a narrative engine, how to convince your reader in six paragraphs or fewer that you know what you’re doing.”

“each of his novels is a kind of ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’: crammed full of figures both realistic and fantastical, many of them engaged in morally compromising behavior, all of them presumably serving some overarching but endlessly debatable organizing principle.”

Reading the New Pynchon Novel in a Pynchonesque America “Shadow Ticket,” Pynchon’s first book in a dozen years, unfolds its conspiracies in Depression-era Milwaukee and beyond, but it lands in a moment when reality seems to have caught up with his fictions...

“It goes without saying that I am leaving out almost everything.”—Kathryn Schulz

El Único Matador—I I-A Matter of Noblesse Oblige

From Lillian Ross: “Franklin’s only physical handicap is his posterior, which sticks out. ‘Sidney has no grace because he has a terrific behind,’ Hemingway says. ‘I used to make him do special exercises to reduce his behind.’”

Ian McEwan’s Latest Is the Best Novel He’s Written in Ages

“The small things scrape against the large.” @dwightgarner.bsky.social

“Elephant,” by Raymond Carver Fiction, from 1986: I knew it was a mistake to let my brother have the money.

“In the second dream, somebody had offered me some whiskey, and I drank it. Drinking that whiskey was the thing that scared me. That was the worst thing that could have happened. . . . Compared to that, everything else was a picnic.”

Seeing Enemies Everywhere The government’s working definition of “hate speech” now seems to include anything that offends Donald Trump personally—including late-night comedy.

“The legal underpinnings of Trump’s threats have always been dubious, but his bullying, as a tactic of intimidation, is succeeding spectacularly. Trump hates being laughed at . . .” @jonathanblitzer.bsky.social

Born today, Robert Benchley in a publicity shot for Foreign Correspondent (1940).

An Unrepressed Podcast Hosted by Freud’s Great-Granddaughter Bella Freud—who’s also the child of Lucian—has had a lot to unpack. She’s working through it, mesmerizingly, on “Fashion Neurosis.”

“I proposed that, if anyone is being treated within her configuration of couch and chair, it is Freud herself.”—Rebecca Mead

Is It Abusive to Make Art About Your Children?

“compliance confused for collaboration . . .”—Parul Sehgal

“Should you find yourself in England and minded to make a pilgrimage to Canterbury, here’s a tip. Beef up your spirit by attending choral Evensong at the cathedral, then nourish the rest of you with a McSpicy and medium fries at the McDonald’s on St. George’s Street.”

The Epstein Birthday Book Is Even Worse Than You Might Realize Reading the two-hundred-and-thirty-eight-page document from start to finish is like examining a crudely illustrated contract with the devil.

“Perhaps there are things that are best understood in terms of demonic force.” @winterjessica.bsky.social

Sally Mann, in Her Golden Hour, Faces Fresh Culture Wars

“Nerves run through her like a ground current.”—Walker Mimms

Mick Herron: What I’m Reading (and Why ‘Wind in the Willows’ Scares Me)

“In poetry, every syllable counts. It can often be overlooked that that’s just as important in prose . . . Rhythm and brevity are among poetry’s lessons.”

It’s the End of ‘Big City.’ New York Will Be Fine.

“No. I haven’t had enough.”—Ginia Bellafante

“Ross, in her winsome slice of New York life, had inadvertently captured the last gasp of teendom before it went online forever.”

“Ross catches them again on the other side of the weekend, disappointed; the party was a bust. Ross didn’t believe in tape recorders—she thought they got in the way of true listening—but her rendering of the girls’ dialogue invites the reader into their buzzing inner world.”

Michael Schulman on Lillian Ross’s “The Shit-Kickers of Madison Avenue” The piece runs sixteen hundred words—long for Talk of the Town, short for an instant classic.

“Hot with anticipation for a party at a midtown club, the girls fuss over what they’ll wear and where they’ll pregame with vodka and orange juice. (One of them is grounded.) @michaelschulman.bsky.social

Always Inadequate The force of low self-esteem can feel so enormous, so unexplainable, it seems almost mythic.

“The solipsism of low self-esteem is one of the wonders of the human psyche. So inexplicable is its grip, so binding its influence, it can feel almost mythic. And why not?”—Vivian Gornick