Longreads

Dinners were served in the basement. Ambassadors, generals with many stars, senior White House officials and closely read columnists — all would walk past the yellowing kitchen, which looked as if it…

IN THE WINTER OF 2009 I took a job as a "fixer" — this is a nice way to say errand girl — for an American writer on assignment in Mexico City. The writer didn't speak Spanish or know…

PETER CAMPION on Carol Muske-Dukesand ANGE MLINKO on Susan Stewart.PETER CAMPIONFind Yourself A City To Live In Carol Muske-DukesTwin Cities Penguin, May 2011. 96 pp.You wake up in a new city, but…

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I came to language only late and only peculiarly. I grew up in a household where the only books were the telephone book and some coloring books. Magazines, though, were called books, but only one magazine ever came into the house, a now-long-gone photographic general-interest weekly commandingly named Look. Words in this household were not often brought into play. There were no discussions that I can remember, no occasions when language was called for at length or in bulk.

When Tim Leary called and asked if I’d pick up Genesis P‑Orridge on my way down from San Francisco to Los Angeles, I knew enough to be afraid—but not a hell of a lot more. As founder of industrial music pioneer Throbbing Gristle and cult-inspiring acid-house follow-up Psychic TV, P‑Orridge was known for soliciting mail-in pubic hair and semen samples from his fans, tattooing his wife’s labia, and staging mock abortions on video. When those tapes were interpreted by clueless police as real satanic murder rituals, it became impossible for Genesis and his family to return to England without danger of imprisonment.

(Fiction) “Who is that?” Adam asked, pointing at a boy on a swing set. Adam was helping, pasting photographs into an album at the kitchen table. His mother, rolling out a piecrust at the counter, paused to look. “That’s Uncle Tommy,” she said. “Don’t you get flour on that.” Next there were some grown-ups sitting on Gramma and Grampa’s couch. Next a lot of people in front of extra-tall corn, kids in front. “Is this Aunt Rosalie?” “That’s Rosalie all right—look at the hair.”