Peter Schmader

“It was dark outside, the quick, new dark that leaps down without dusk on the day; but, because there were no lights in the streets, it seemed as set and as old as midnight.”

Soldiers of the Republic

“Then all of us said ‘Salud!’ as many times as could be for six of them and three of us, and then they filed out of the café, the six of them, tired and dusty and little, as men of a mighty horde are little.”

From 1967: Dorothy Parker, Literary Wit, Dies at Age 73

From the obituary by Alden Whitman, a quote from Edmund Wilson: “‘she has put into what she has written a voice, a state of mind, an era, a few moments of human experience that nobody else has conveyed.’”

Scandal, Protest, Goofiness, and Grandeur at the U.S. Bicentennial This year marks the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the nation’s founding. The two hundredth wasn’t exactly smooth sailing.

“by almost any measure, 2026 is a goat rodeo.”—Jill Lepore

“a running theme in “Reproductive Wrongs”: men making a bloody mess of things and then deciding that the havoc they’ve wreaked must be a woman’s fault.”

Did the Anti-Abortion Movement Begin in Ancient Rome?

“Underneath all the moralizing is a relentless push to make intimacy subject to state power . . .” @jenszalai.bsky.social

‘They stay there because it’s familiar and because it’s safe. But if I can get them to start looking at it the way we’re talking right now, that spell can be loosened.’

A Psychoanalyst Lets Us Eavesdrop

Stephen Grosz, from the article by Daphne Merkin:

‘For many people, what we know best is suffering. Our suffering. And people stay there.

“I’m almost invariably stuck after one page or one paragraph—at which point I have to begin thinking about what the story could possibly be about. I begin by writing paragraphs that don’t have an immediate relation to a plot. The sound of the story comes first.”

Mitski’s New Album Is a Dark Ode to Isolation On “Nothing’s About to Happen to Me,” a reclusive woman confronts the inhospitality of the world beyond her door.

“The album’s concern is one that has shaped my own life and the lives of many people I know: when the world is increasingly inhospitable, is isolating oneself that irrational of a response?”—Hanif Abdurraqib

These Women Journalists Changed Their Field. Their Lives Make Great Copy.

“maybe the idiosyncratic lives of these peregrinating writers invite a . . . proposal: Read this book and be enthralled.” @jenszalai.bsky.social

Hungry for Affirmation, Vulnerable to Scams: As a Writer, I Know the Feeling

“My new best friend Chazzy . . .” @danbarry58.bsky.social

We Are Creatures Who Mourn | Jonathan Lear | Granta ‘The outcome of analysis isn’t meant to be some sort of independent product, some story I now have.’ Benjamin Y. Fong interviews Jonathan Lear on how philosophy and psychoanalysis intersect.

‘Freud can be criticized for all sorts of things. But his genius was to make something out of a failure.’

Jonathan Lear on Freud, failure and speaking truthfully.

granta.com/we-are-creat...

“I trusted my motives in taking possession of a piece of material I genuinely considered my own. After all, the book wasn’t about Mama, it was about me coming to maturity.”

“You read about people who live to a hundred and five, a hundred and seven, even longer. I expected him to be one of them, and I still don’t understand why he wasn’t.”

Roger and the Smooth Fox Terriers My husband, who died at a hundred and one, was utterly secular. So where are these dogs coming from?

“A couple of times, Roger took both my hands in his and looked me in the eye—an earnest, uncharacteristic gesture that startled me and brought me to attention—and said he was so, so, so sorry that Andy was old, too.”—Margaret Moorman

‘I questioned all that I’ve learned in life, multiple times this week . . . I questioned it all. And then I left those questions behind, and stepped into the arena anyway.’

Sex, Secrets and Neglect Fuel Lauren Groff’s New Book

“Groff is spilling so much salt right now, Morton should give her a jingle.” @alexandrajacobs.bsky.social

“I began seeing my memories with the wisdom of adult hindsight . . .”

The Absent-Minded Heart

From William Maxwell: “Smiling, she lit a cigarette and then, unable to keep the joke to herself any longer, she leaned toward him, took his hand in hers, and said, ‘Valentine’s Day is next Thursday.’”

The Irresistible, and False, Myth of the Brontë Sisters Charlotte, Anne, and Emily were neither mad nor bad nor particularly dangerous to know.

From Peter Ackroyd: “The four of them were instinctive novelists, mainly because they saw no distinction between invention and reality; it is hard to overemphasize how much those unreal worlds meant to them, since they seem to have dreamed, lived, and imagined very little else.”

“Even novels regarded as misfires or miscalculations contain phosphorescent passages of which no other writer, save Nabokov in his magic shop, seemed capable.”

“Perhaps the best way to appreciate Updike and discover what all the fuss was about is to start with the early stories and novels and carve out your own canon at a stately pace, as his lordship would desire.

“The as-yet-unspoken words will be found in this place where the language falters, on the frontier of psyche and soma.”

“Maybe I hadn’t ever wanted to feel it, but now every cell in me knew it for the truth: that they were real, and so was I, and so was the love that ran between us.”

“when suddenly I became hot, flushed all over, with the understanding that these people loved me. Perhaps I had never before been open enough to feel it, but in that moment I did: how fragile a person was in loving you, and the terrible responsibility that came with it.

“I think we have failed to appreciate that Trump has undertaken such a sweeping campaign against free speech precisely because it has proceeded so swiftly over the past year on so many fronts . . .”

Donald Trump’s Disingenuous Promise to Champion Free Speech It is Donald Trump’s systematic campaign to stamp out dissent and punish those who disagree with him that will be remembered as among the most singularly un-American aspects of his disruptive tenure.

“Can anyone say confidently that he will not succeed when he tries once again to jail his political opponents for speaking out against him, as he seems so intent upon doing?” @sbg1.bsky.social

The Paranoid Style Cover "Passionate Kisses": Listen At the end of the week, the Paranoid Style — the rock band led by the great singer-songwriter, journalist, and occasional Stereogum contributor Elizabeth Nelson — will release their new album Known As...

Hear @paranoiacs.bsky.social's cover of Lucinda Williams' "Passionate Kisses" (and a bunch of other tracks from their new album out this week)

The End of Books Coverage at the Washington Post Becca Rothfeld, a former critic at the Washington Post, on the death of the paper’s books section.

“It is a sign of a fatally limited imagination to assume that we can only ever desire the pittance to which we are currently reconciled.”—Becca Rothfeld