Jason Guriel | On Browsing | November 2022 | 4,361 words (15 minutes) Let’s browse a bookstore—a Platonic one, a composite. Let’s wander an aisle, running our fingertips across a wall of spines. One spine, thick and black, juts out: the recent NYRB Classics reissue of William Gaddis’s novel The Recognitions. It’s a block of a book, […]
book excerpt
‘Some Things Never Leave You’: Christian Livermore on Poverty’s Indelible Marks
“For me, passing means trying to be anything other than what I was, and what I fear so desperately I always will be: poor white trash.”
Even the Steam Had a Shadow
“He couldn’t remember coming here, or going anywhere. He looked down at himself. With a writhe of horror, he found he couldn’t even remember getting dressed. His clothes were unfamiliar.”
Happy is a Relative State
“The rest of my life will always be entwined with rheumatoid arthritis. But it’s my choice to also be something more, to not feel sick, to still find those shadows of a dancer, which is to say tiny flecks of magic, within me.”
The Fracking Lottery
“When I moved to Billtown, I worried most about whether fracking tainted groundwater. By the time I left the area, my biggest concern was whether the liberty granted to citizens to lease their land, or to otherwise act in ways that limits others’ access to environmental goods, taints democracy.”
Binders Full of Men
In an excerpt from her new book on fertility, feminism, and queer family-building, Jennifer Berney explores the possibilities of sperm banks.
The Geography Closest In
In her new book, Miranda Ward explores the unique place of almost-motherhood — an uncertain landscape characterized by waiting, wanting, hoping, and not-knowing.
The Powerful Decide
What makes good or bad design happen anywhere depends on who has the most power.
The Grieving Landscape
Upon discovering that her mother had been a member of the group Women Strike For Peace (WSP), Heidi Hutner becomes obsessed with feminist nuclear history.
Your Wilderness Is Not Permanent
At an uncertain time in her life, Sejal Shah does Burning Man her own way.