i joked about it today but i actually can't listen to any more talk about ai. not only does it make me want to kill myself it makes me wonder if i'm ai, like a cylon unsure if he's a cylon

they never should have given the nobel to a white lady with dreds

If @legroff.bsky.social wasn’t a writer, she says she’d be a landscape architect in an interview with @rumaan.bsky.social. For the three-time National Book Award finalist, making a work of fiction malleable is much like planting a garden or shaping the land.

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

the best books of the year... in april... the new york times book review needs to get it the fuck together

“The experience stunned Ms. Ross-Mahé, who previously considered herself a supporter of President Trump and so admired his policy to deport illegal immigrants that she thought it should be adopted in France.” Uh Ok

I can’t believe society hasn’t come up with an alternative to smoking a cigarette. When I finish an annoying task I take a cigarette break without the cig. I sit and stare into space for 8 minutes. It’s not as fun as smoking

Measles is NOT "just like chickenpox". It can kill years later. This woman was so brave for coming forward with her story. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/o...

If I were directing riz Ahmed and Joe alwyn in hamlet I’d throw in a scene where hamlet and laertes make out a little

“I cannot imagine anything more ignominious than watching ‘Hamnet’.”

"Passage is making an ambitious statement: these novels of adventurous, upstanding boy-heroes are not only quintessentially American but fundamentally right-wing." fun piece on the HARDY BOYS

“Everybody’s using AI for everything nowadays, and if you don’t, you’re a misfit outsider who should be stoned to death in the town square, and then resurrected virtually from your data so you can be stoned to death in the virtual town square, for infinity.” www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/o...

I was yelling at someone about Helen Dewitt and they didn’t know what I was talking about and I was like right… normal people don’t care about this and neither should I

ive never been that good at it but i've really just stopped answering my email? if it matters they'll FIND you and it turns out it almost never matters

"Failure is a beautiful thing. When you write, the joy is in coming up against what you can’t do. And then you and the work have to be reconciled together." — @legroff.bsky.social speaking with @rumaan.bsky.social in the spring issue of @bombmag.bsky.social bombmagazine.org/articles/202...

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

Trying to foment a Sinclair Lewis renaissance but it’s not sticking

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.

i find myself in crisis, in need of music to listen to while writing a book, in need of a playlist someone else has made for me, but as far as i understand it the only person who would ever do such a thing is a college boyfriend, so in short i am in need of a college boyfriend

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

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.

My child just said “I hate working but I love money”… he’s only 13 but truly an adult now

Today at the gym I saw a commercial for a fast food meal of fried chicken meant to be dipped in ice cream. I also saw a woman using a laptop on the treadmill. Both of these made me feel v sad

This snow is an industry plant. Never heard of it til yesterday now it’s all anyone is talking about. I call bullshit

So good

💔Bud Cort 1948 – 2026

i was going upstairs at the bookstore, and a toddler and her father were coming down. she was holding three books, stepping slow in winter boots, then dropped everything and looked up and said of me: "he has a pink hat." maybe it's bc i'm worried i'm dying but i found this almost unbearably moving

Police Repeatedly Shoot Tim Cook After Mistaking iPhone For Gun https://theonion.com/police-repeatedly-shoot-tim-cook-after-mistaking-iphone-1824184361/

Last week I thought I was going to die. I didn’t. I watched some tv instead.

Baby spinach has almost wholly supplanted spinach in Brooklyn groceries. I haven’t seen spinach in ages. Baby spinach is for babies I’m an iron deficient man

My nephew just said boys can’t marry boys

There are two other gay novelists who live near me and literally every time I leave the house I see one of them. Today I told one of them this and that I’m worried we don’t all actually exist, that we might all be shades of the same person. He agreed this is worrisome

I am at a quite nice or at any rate very expensive restaurant in manhattan and there is a couple here with their DOG? American society is sick about pets but if you have to take your dog out to dinner I’m sorry but get a fucking life

hamnet was a very confusing movie?! first of all it's pronounced hamLet. second why does shakespeare's WIFE act like she's never been to the live theater? third why does paul mescal not take his shirt off more

My older teen was describing something bad and said it was “federal” presumably derived from federal offense but wow

Chatting with a friend I said “chihuly is kaws for baby boomers” and it was so apt that I wish I had occasion to publish this statement so I’m sharing it here

when people express disbelief that my children are teens i say "well i was a young father" and wait for them to affirm that i look young though of late people have not been... biting. anyway if you see me at a party pls express shock that i am old enough to have teens thanks

I went to a party tonight in fact and worked this into THREE different conversations? My god I’m so boring

I loved Gerald Howard’s biography of Malcolm cowley which I read just after Mary Dearborn’s bio of Carson McCullers, which I also loved. Unfortunately all my small talk now involves McCullers or Cowley sorry if you run into me at a party

I like how every day I pay Apple $3.80 for something but what I have no idea, and then periodically Apple is like oh actually today you paid is $17.45 thanks

Hello! Today is the publication day of my new book, A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction. To celebrate, I have already received an email from a fake book club, offering to feature it in their Saturday Showcase. (You can order it here: bookshop.org/p/books/a-lo...)

I'm doing something revolutionary. Something no one has done before: A NEWSLETTER! Yes, I'm throwing a party and I'd love for you to come.

when i read nonfiction about midcentury life i simply cannot believe how much people drank and how much they cared about communism

i watched a depressing gay movie (the history of sound) then read a depressing literary biography (carson mccullers) and now i'm depressed, way to go

Tom Stoppard, playwright of dazzling wit and playful erudition, dies aged 88

I took my child to see wicked and I hate that shrieky Broadway shit but my takeaway is that Ariana grande kind of has a Madeline Kahn thing going on

Pointed out to my teen that by the time his little cousin is 16, my child will be 32. He grew serious. “Not me. Me… an unc…”

I hate the show I’m watching (the morning show) and the book I’m reading (this side of paradise) and am somehow determined to see it through with both of them