Reading at Trump Tower

Part I. Project Runway She sauntered by at noon, shopping bags swinging from both arms, striding toward the infamous golden escalators. She was attractive with a flowing mane and long gait. Mostly, I noticed the grey raincoat she was wearing; it was a bright, summer day outside. Then she got swallowed up in the atrium’s […]

Lost and Found

After graduate school I drifted into a glamour job as a publicist for a well-known book publisher, where they paid me a pittance to write press releases and book jacket copy. It was fun for a while, until I went to my high school reunion and someone said, “I thought by now I’d be reading […]

Newt The Rare Book Man

I spent my nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first years standing on the corner of West Fourth Street and Washington Square East, selling used paperback books off of a folding card table. This was ten years ago, when West Fourth Street was still full of booksellers. Many of these men were smart lunatics with poor social skills. They had […]

Get Busy

My friend Flip didn’t read, he told me, because he was all about music. Slick, shiny, high-gloss music. Nothing got him more excited than discussing “production values.” He’d play dance remixes for me and practically conduct them as some new version of an awful song stomped and restomped its way through a cathedral-like reverb chamber […]

Cleanup in Aisle Five

I wanted to buy a book the other night. I had read an old review of “The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break” and wanted to pick up a copy. So on my way home, I decided to stop at the Court Street Barnes & Noble. Things were fine when I got off the subway. I […]

Reflections on Glass