When you’ve finished the story, delete the sentence. The story did not have to be in the form of a letter, and “you” could be ...

William Dean Howells called it his “Uneasy Chair.” Lewis H. Lapham thought it “a column always grotesquely misnamed.” Bernard DeVoto simply wanted to do something else—a books section—and tried to fob ...

From Wildcat Dome, which will be published in March by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Translated from the Japanese by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda. She gets off the bus and walks for about twenty meters along the ...

From 9-1-1 calls made in September by Patricia Upton, a resident of Kitsap County, Washington. operator: 9-1-1, what are you reporting? patricia upton: Yes, I need a officer to come out to my property ...

From a series of 144-word essays on Untitled Thought Project, Lacey’s Substack newsletter. This entry was published in October. I’ve been doing paperwork in Mexico City, signing thing after thing.

Shia LaBeouf and I were born six days apart in June 1986. I see him as the representative of my nanodemographic—as if my week’s cohort of white American males emerged from a brief huddle to announce, ...

I just wanted to tap. But in the mid-Eighties and early Nineties, in the well-to-do suburbs of New Jersey, the price of flapping, winging, and shuffling off to Buffalo was… ...

From scientific findings awarded Ig Nobel Prizes since 2014. Fake medicine that causes painful side effects can be more effective than fake medicine that does not cause painful side effects.

From “An Army of One’s Own,” which appeared in the February 1997 issue of Harper’s Magazine. The complete article—along with the magazine’s entire 174 ...

From a manuscript in progress. I used to think my grandmother peed pink.

From comments that the British public submitted to the National Health Service in response to a call for suggestions on ways to improve its care. Tax the rich. Establish drop-in centers in ...