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‘“lol” is a way of asking for something – attention, reassurance, care or even love – while pretending not to ask for anything.’
Harriet Armstrong on what we really mean when we punctuate our text messages with ‘lol’.
‘“To gift” is no gift to me.’
Christian Lorentzen on transitive verbs.
‘Some line breaks coincide with the end of a sentence or phrase; others don’t.’
Maggie Millner on pauses, silences and choosing where to end the line.
‘The x was only really a kiss in context. It was a kiss depending on who sent it, and when. Otherwise it was affection, friendliness, and disguised aggression.’
Akshi Singh on language, letters, and when to leave a kiss.
‘This is language interrogating itself.’
Will Harris on Alice Notley’s ‘wrong’ quotation marks.
Mary Gaitskill is the author of three novels, three books of short stories, and an essay collection. Her most recent works are the novella This Is Pleasure (2019) and an omnibus of old and new work, both fiction and non-fiction, The Devil’s Treasure (2021). She is currently working on a novel based on the Faust story, as well as another novella titled And This Is Pain.
Photograph © Brigitte Lacombe
‘The intensity of it seemed in retrospect something inexplicable, like a sudden opening in the sky with an outpouring of visions.’
Mary Gaitskill on her experiences with Pneuma therapy.
‘Fiction, even if it’s completely made up, does say something about how you experience reality.’
Mary Gaitskill talks about her book The Devil’s Treasure.
‘Which deaths are tragic and which are not? Who decides what is big and what is little?’
Memoir by Mary Gaitskill.
‘He was an eminent historian of the United States, a perceptive social critic, and a professor at Columbia University. But as a dad he was playful and affectionate and irreverent.’
Dan Hofstadter on his father, the historian Richard Hofstadter.
‘Overlooking the water from my rental car, I thought about the American Girl’s pupal stage. About my pupal stage. The moment when a girl becomes an extraordinary machine.’
Sophie Kemp on the American teenage girl.
‘He’d come to tell her that he was leaving. It seemed rather impossible now – the telling, not the leaving.’