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

all morning i'll be like wow can't wait to get to work and do some WORK and then i sit down at my desk and think huh could i wear a BOLO TIE and then i spend an hour wondering about that. i hate myself

i like joan didion but i think ive heard enough about her

"When they were much younger the two friends often went dancing together. Here, in their jangly movement, a faint memory of that past rises to the surface, this time animating far older bodies. It is surprisingly lovely..." (I saw this this weekend. Rebecca Hall is incredible.)

for a long time i thought i wanted to make a podcast about the novels of anita brookner but eventually i realized i just wanted a friend who liked anita brookner. i wanted to have like 23 conversations about her work. that's not a podcast it's just sadness

When I watch tv shows I really imagine myself in their fictional universes. Perhaps all people do. I watch tv and think I could do that, I could bake a Victoria sponge or host the today show or be the ambassador to the court of st James

I saw rami malek in a movie today. He is so beautiful and thin and strange. He made me think of some animal, maybe a cat or a kind of small but lovely rodent

it would be so sick if we actually did replace taxis with camels. camels are the most whimsical animal. new york would be so charmingly surreal with tens of thousands of camels wandering about

in this intervew i conflated amy odell's biography of anna wintour with tina brown's vanity fair diaries. SORRY! it was the former who watched 9/11 with kissinger. thank you for your attention to this matter. anyway this interview is my lament for expertise and taste and magazines....

I’m taking my kid on a high school tour And there’s a girl here who’s being such an unbelievable pill to her mother that both me and my child started laughing and had to move seats

Chloe Sevigny should win an Oscar for the scene in after the hunt in which she reacts to hearing “the last of the famous international playboys”

there should be a VIP new yorker festival wherein mary gaitskill comes to your house and reads you a fucked up bedtime story

A key part of my process (the process of being gay not being a writer) is watching that clip of Diane Keaton singing “seems like old times” from the end of Annie hall

Just to point out the obvs but this is what the Nobel prize is! Just some random rich (also dead) guy being like yeah this is good. Prizes are meaningless but wealth redistribution is real

the days have an increasingly 'children of men' energy and i dont know how much more i can take

my takeaway from being a judge for the national book awards is that it would be SUPER FUN to be rich enough to endow a prize. imagine you just read a bunch of books for kicks and then were like, yeah this is the best one, and sent the writer ten thousand dollars? i think rich people should do this

i have been reading ratner's star. i'm not sure i've ever understood a novel less. i hope delillo wins the nobel this month