Nicholson Baker
"Part of the reason a worthless book is worth retaining is that its worthlessness means something."
For You: A Poem
dear nobody, I have taken drugs to calm the pale pearl faced woman with red hair that lives inside me my sweet mania (you saw her briefly, fled from her open legs) I had to lure her with the glassy green globes of chloral hydrate, drape her in the dark mourning of depression and as …
The Jesus Video
Essentially, the Jesus movie consists of nothing more than a pretty-boy Shakespearean with a prominent forehead wandering aimlessly around Israel and muttering half-heartedly about eternity while a bunch of people with disheveled hair act as if they are in awe of his prowess.
Six Poems by John Sweet
words like black blood from the frozen ground: a psalm and twenty years later you still dream of your childhood house on fire you turn to me for all of the things i can no longer give you the names of streets or of old lovers or the reassuring weight of lies and everything …
The Bloodsucker of Nagasaki
Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead? —1 Corinthians 15:29 There's a vampire in my background. He has stalked me all my life, but he failed to fix his fangs in my jugular until, like an …
Underneath the Griffin Tree
Wasn't just a few years ago I liked to lie under the Griffin tree. Least that's how it was known back then. A big ol' shady tree in the middle of a field where I'd go a-rompin' with the boys, givin' 'em of my sweetness, robbin' 'em of that last bit of innocence they pretended …
Germany Year Zero
History is constantly torn between science and art. Sometimes, people try to resolve this dilemma by pulling art, and fiction in particular, toward the scientific, sometimes, by stressing the artistic side of science, and, sometimes, by calling it a void argument. But how do we avoid a question inscribed in the ambiguity of the very …
Anthony Giardina
"I think there is something about the fixedness of male sexuality that is comforting to us. Or the alleged fixedness."
A Woman is Like a Cow
Just before I reached puberty, my Maltese father told me, “A woman is like a cow, always with one eye opened and one eye closed.” And I wondered if he’d meant only my mother. Just before my wedding day, my father told me what he’d meant: “A woman always pretends she can’t see anything, but …
Susan Orlean
"I like the mental puzzle involved with dealing with a real situation rather than one that you can just arbitrarily choose to change. And frankly I like the social mission of writing non-fiction."