When the time first changes I like adding the nagging feeling that I’m running late to my other extant anxieties
The unexpected Proustian power of, of all things, the song LIFE IS A HIGHWAY, transporting me back to the era of watching the awful animated film CARS endlessly
I wrote about Hermione Lee's biography of Anita Brookner, and Brookner's third and maybe best novel, Look At Me. (This piece has the best headline of anything I've ever published, though I can't take credit for that.)
The Dour and the Glory
Hermione Lee’s biography of Anita Brookner – Rumaan Alam
bookforum.com
this is funny. upsetting yes but also hilarious www.wired.com/story/macmil...
Macmillan Staff Say the Publisher Threw a Party for a Workplace AI Assistant That Was Later Killed
Workers tell WIRED that NOA—or “No Ordinary Assistant”—was unhelpful. Bestselling authors also say AI is ruining their relationships with Big Five publishers.
wired.com
never mind having a personal AI assistant, whatever that might be, or outsourcing loving your children to it.... i need to know why you would name your personal AI assistant 'Dazzle'
I’m trying to will myself into having a “good idea” which mostly entails me saying to myself “ok have a good idea” it’s not working but will report back
my life is falling apart so i decided to watch the west wing? it's completely demented but i will say i find i'm not thinking about my collapsing life
Having teens is no great shakes however I will say there’s zero pressure to go apple picking
I wrote about Ayad Akhtar's fascinating new novel THE RADIANCE. I came up with only this: Perhaps the discovery of the fiction writer is that life, with its secrets, its violence, its illnesses, is inexplicable. Maybe that’s part of why we read novels: Real life, who needs it?
A Novel That Looks Deep Into a Crisis on Campus
The unsettling events of Ayad Akhtar’s “The Radiance” reflect a broader malaise in society.
newrepublic.com
I’m at lunch on the upper east side listening to the man at the next table talk about ai. This is getting dire. We need new small talk in the culture
Me and @markkrotov.bsky.social wrote about Anne Carson and the Nobel Prize in Literature newrepublic.com/article/2164...
Anne Carson Is (Yet Another) Perfect Nobel Literature Laureate
It’s hard to argue with the Canadian poet who was awarded literature’s most prestigious award on Thursday. That may be the problem.
newrepublic.com
you should be able to write a letter of recommendation for yourself. like who knows better how great you are
A really handsome young man talked to me whilst at the gym. This should count as community service
RIP Annie Dillard, one of the great, if not the greatest, non-fiction stylists of our time www.nytimes.com/2026/09/16/b...
Annie Dillard, Meditative Author of ‘Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,’ Dies at 81
Her Thoreau-like account of journeys in the woods, published when she was 28, was the first of many ruminations on life and nature, good and evil.
nytimes.com
"Lunch with Anita would last for 75 minutes, involving a small piece of fish and two cigarettes – the good old days – before a single coffee and a taxi home. Some would consider it a poor life, but in many ways it was the richest..."
Andrew O’Hagan · Omelettes and Whisky: Anita Brookner’s Edge
Over the course of 24 novels and 87 years, Anita Brookner achieved many dislocations of selfhood and may have become...
lrb.co.uk
today my therapist said i seemed especially, unusually crazy, the sort of thing you dream a therapist will say to you tbh
i have to connect my child's city issued google id to a whole new spate of google classrooms and to be honest it seems simpler to fake my death, change my name, go into hiding, and emerge only when said child has finished his schooling
I was so provoked by something in its pages that I said something snarky about the times book review on instagram and was struck by the comments from many writers, editors, and publishing people. There’s some reluctance to say it out loud (it’s rude I get it) but the times book review is… bad
If my husb went to war and ROBERT PATTINSON came calling I wouldn’t fucking weave I can tell you that much
I listened to the audiobook of Liza Minellis memoir, read by the author, and I think the producer who oversaw it should write their own memoir about the experience of recording it.
i just saw a picture of junot diaz and thought it was me. so i apologize to everyone who has ever confused me with junot diaz, im sorry i called you racist
The irony of the times publishing this claptrap and also promoting their “best books of the year so far” in APRIL is almost beyond parody
Where Have All the Book Reviews Gone?
nytimes.com
Anna Wintour on the cover of Vogue is so stupid and lame. It feels very firmly like the end of an era. She should retire, what a joke
Why Is Anna Wintour on the Cover of Vogue for ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’?
Anna Wintour and Meryl Streep appear together on Vogue's cover — a strange way to promote a movie franchise that started by satirizing Wintour
variety.com
today i remembered, with astonishing clarity, that when i was in college an extremely handsome art student built an installation outside of my house. he reupholstered the interior of an old car and filled the interior with sand. you sat inside and watched a film being projected. he was VERY handsome
It was like a lighthouse: sometimes she could see herself with real clarity, and then the light would swing away, and she was unable to do so anymore.
The World Is an Easier Place Without You In It by Karen Shepard
March 16, 2026 – A mother-daughter story in documents.
theparisreview.org
for my newsletter, the only thing i care about writing any more, i wrote about realizing that edouard vuillard is one of my favorite artists
Current Enthusiasms #31: rooms and paintings of rooms
Earnest recommendations.
substack.com
When men have two cellphones… very unsexy… what’s ur job bb looking at your two phones? Fun
The novelist Rumaan Alam and the photographer David Land, with their two sons, downsized to a three-bedroom in Fort Greene where wild and chintzy wallpaper plays a starring role—everywhere.
The Family That Wallpapers Together
The novelist Rumaan Alam and the photographer David Land, with their two sons, downsized to a three-bedroom in Fort Greene where wild and chintzy wallpaper plays a starring role—everywhere.
curbed.com