Short Takes

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  California Distraction: A Cocktail

  Writing a novel is slow and tedious, delightful and fulfilling. It takes years and draft after draft. Ron Carlson recommends that you write...

  Jun 28, 2016

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  Two Very American Tragedies

  Watching ESPN’s "OJ: Made In America," I thought of Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy."

  Jun 23, 2016

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  A Note from Mike Davis about the Second Amendment

  FIVE WEEKS BEFORE the final ratification of the Bill of Rights in December 1791, the regular Army of the United States of America...

  Jun 13, 2016

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  Ali

  I WENT TO a boxing match in Las Vegas once, because it was a Showtime match and I had a friend on a Showtime show at the time. It was Mike...

  Jun 8, 2016

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  From Discarded Chapters, Final Sentences

  7. The assassin appeared out of the dark and fired the shotgun through the kitchen door, striking him from below, in the back, under his...

  Jun 7, 2016

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  Are We Still Fabulous?

  Oh you’ve got green eyes, oh you’ve got blue eyes, oh you’ve got gray eyes.” — New Order, “Temptation” (1982) IN THE EARLY 1980s, Medusa’s Juice Bar...

  May 17, 2016

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  On Joanna Walsh’s "Grow a Pair: 9 ½ Fairytales About Sex"

  ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a love child of Harry Mathews’s Singular Pleasures and Amelia Gray’s AM/PM. The result, Joanna Walsh’s Grow a Pair...

  Apr 26, 2016

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  On Pictures of Ships

  In 1955, UFO researcher Morris K. Jessup claimed to have received a letter from a man calling himself Carlos Allende, pointing him to an experiment...

  Apr 25, 2016

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  Gush. An Appreciation.

  Let us embrace sensuality: to gush, to splatter, to be enthused.

  Apr 18, 2016