April 28, 2025
- What does it take to write a cookbook?
- The heteropessimism of Sophie Kemp’s fiction
- Mitchell S. Jackson reads Shakespeare for the first time in his 40s
- Close
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“My younger brother had developed a phobia of listening to records played at the wrong speeds. We’d be listening to a 45 or an LP, and if I moved the RPM knob one way or the other and the song lurched into nasal, pinched hysteria or growled down to a menacing dirge, Paul would cover his ears, his eyes flashing. Sometimes he’d dash from the room; sometimes he’d cry.”
“As the train pulled into the station and passengers began stepping down, I watched people on the platform staring at me—a very short middle-aged woman with a red and green woven bag, jumping down from the train with the nimble step of a dancer. What they didn't know is that I could have done it in my sleep, that I had spent years jumping down from moving trains all across the Soviet Union”