I'm a retired book editor, but I am almost tempted to "get back in the arena" for the opportunity to write "Nuzzi?" on a flag or in the margin.

Found it! A little the worse for wear, but I'm sure Honey Ryder and, blush, Pussy Galore won't mind.

I once joked that the next Didion book to emerge from the crypt would be JOAN DIDION'S SHOPPING LISTS. Now that doesn't seem like a joke. Basta! Puh-leeze, enough with the fetishizing! #Didion www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/d...

You would do be a big favor it you could unearth a bottle of James Bond Aftershave, which my mother gave me as present for Christmas 1965. I was a rabid Bond fan and had begun shaving. (Hai Karate Cologne came later.)

A note to Nuzzi's publisher, Avid Reader: Hey folks, could we maybe get some Avid Editing going here? The unfunny joke is that you named your imprint after the title of a memoir by Robert Gottlieb, one of the greatest American editors ever. Has KKR cut back your blue pencil budget? #Nuzzi

But you know, I really feel sorry for him about the bamboo, because we've been there, it is hellish. Plus this can be used to illustrate the concept of "objective correlative" in English classes. Really fun couple, though. Made for each other.

I really don't think Olivia Nuzzi should be burdened with the failings of the female gender. She should be burdened with the failings of the human species.

Jeff! Jeff Bezos! Pay attention!

Are there any other William Irwin Thompson fans out there? This book hit my brain with real impact in the, ahem, spiritually confused early seventies; his later work, esp. THE TIME FALLING BODIES TAKE TO LIGHT opened my mind up in intriguing ways. A truly Big Thinker.

Look at the smug expression on this douchebag's face. It really makes you want to smear something on it and then sew his amazingly thin lips shut.

Gore Vidal. Gore Vidal. Gore Vidal, fer chrissake.

Omigod! I was a kid with an insatiable reading habit and this was the Twilight Zone episode that hit me hardest and has stayed with me the longest!

I've been there three times this year, brother. Good luck to you. No better feeling than when you get back to your own home, in your own bed. Ahhh.

Can anyone tell me with any degree of certainty whether this is an actual post on Truth Social? If it is, the penultimate sentence is jaw-dropping, even by Trump standards. Thank you for your attention to this matter (if I may . . .).

Down, boy! I think we know where this is headed . . . .

And Mr. Gilligan, is it really the best use of Rhea Seehorn to cast her as so dislikable a character, when she is one of the most effortlessly relatable actresses on television now, or ever? #Pluribus

The problem with PLURIBUS so far is that while I don't necessarily root for the pod people, I find it hard to get on the side of the remaining human humans, as represented by Rhea Seehorn's joyless character.Maybe Vince Gilligan intends to flip the script and put us on the side of the aliens?

Jesus approves.

Three episodes in and we are transitioning from Hmmm to Huh? to WTF? #PLURIBUS

And to Avid Reader Press, her publisher, I ask: Really? This bizarre piece of self-serving garbage is what you want your imprint to represent? You got into publishing to smear yourself with THIS?

One of the best things I ever did in my editorial career was to convince Don to let us put AMERICANA back in print in Penguin. It is not his greatest book, but it is my personal favorite.

With Olivia Nuzzi and Michael Wolff at the head of the bottom-feeding, morality-free pack, is it any wonder that trust in journalism is in the toilet? We await our present-day Ben Hecht to turn it into entertainment.

I once seriously considered commisioning a book to be titled SEX LIVES OF THE ROCK DRUMMERS. I wish I had.

It would appear that appealing to the financial greed of the ultra-rich and catering to the sexual desire of powerful men for attractive underage girls can get you very far in this world. Although it may also get you killed.

Also the price of catburgers and dogburgers has risen enormously because of those immigrants. Have you tried to buy ground cat meat and dog meat at the supermarket lately? Unbelievable!

I would love to have taken that course! (BTW, I published FIGHT CLUB.) But I have spent quite a lot of time wondering whether Don DeLillo really is a postmodernist, and I have come to the conclusion that he is not. How to classify his work critically? That is where it gets really hard.

One of the serious takeaways from the Epstein scandal is how many scientists, academics, intellectuals and self-anointed "big thinkers" were quite happy to be bought by him and brought into the scummy circle of his activities. That scurrying sound you hear is of those people running scared. Money...

Attention inventory managers: time for a big new printing in anticipation of demand. Also, a smart publisher might consider retitling their Conan Doyle collections THE DOG THAT DIDN'T BARK.

If the Church keeps this up it might make up for the terrible losses of the sexual abuse scandals and win back at least part of its soul and many many other souls. I might . . . reconsider.

Agreed. But coming up fast on the inside: Steven Pinker, also part of the Epstein Collection of Useful Intellectuals.

"There was also Glenway Wescott, but Glenway Wescott at no time interested Gertrude Stein. He had a certain syrup but it does not pour." -- THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS Oh snap. But as you well know, Gertrude, remarks are not literature.

Heat up those knitting needles to a bright cherry red glow and plunge them into both my eyeballs so I can never ever read this crap. When will the Times wake up to this guy's idiocy and what he is doing to its intellectual credibility? www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/o...

Yes, we desperately need to teach an entity completely without emotions how to get in touch with its nonexistent emotions so it can realistically mimic actual emotions. Who could possibly object to that?

What, something not true popped up on Instagram? I'm shocked!

Also the Resolute Desk has been moved to Mar a Lago. Guy is ransacking the White House like a flea market.

In this regard let's tip our hat to Dick Cavett, who had genuine intellectuals, inluding, famously, Gore Vidal and Noman Mailer, and also Updike and Cheeever, on regularly. He even had Malcolm Cowley on! Although I was never able to find that show on line, a great frustration.

A fair point. It does meet the reader halfway, unlike, say, Trilling's criticism.

Well, the great thing about American culture in general and book culture in particular in the forties and fifties is that the highbrow -- see esp. Anchor Books -- was as widely available as middlebrow productions. Can we have that time back?

There was nothing middlebrow at all about THE PORTABLE FAULKNER, au contraire. In the brilliance of its editorial selections and, esp., its critical introduction, it holds its brow very very high.

Just finished this terrific novel, NYRB Classics does it again. A book that makes you ask the question, is the curated life is worth living, or when did reality take on the aspect of an Instagram face? Has the clear and inescapable logic of a perfect syllogism.

The Night of the Living Political Dead continues. He can't imagine a world in which he isn't somehow in charge.

More to the point, what if Ross Douthat went out with a whimper?

Alumni can make our once-great university feel the pain by refusing to donate one single penny until Cornell reverses course. And of course bombard the prsident's office with letters of outrage. Hardball can be played by both sides.

So does that mean that Stephen Miller is a "most weasel"?

My alma mater,caving in.High above Cayuga's waters cowardice reigns, and Thomas Pynchon, E. B. White, Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Farina are weeping. In the future all appeals for money will go into the waste basket or be deleted. What a stain on a once great school. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/u...

"I have not the vaguest idea what Brooklyn is interested in." --Walter Lippmann

He's the premier escape artist in American ficiton. He eludes every attempt to put him in a box or write the books he's "supposed to" write. In other words, he an entirely autonmous artist, the real thing

I liked the original version of PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT a lot better. What a jackoff (if I may . . . ). www.nj.com/sports/2025/...