Sublime

Mrs. Amber Moltke, the artist’s young spouse, wore a great billowing pastel housedress and flattened espadrilles and was, for better or worse, the sexiest morbidly obese woman Atwater had ever seen. Eastern Indiana was not short on big pretty girls, but this was less a person than a vista, a quarter ton of sheer Midwest pulchritude, and Atwater had

So here lies the publishing industry: the “accessible,” commercial book at the bottom, necessary to the bottom line but not worthy of adulation; and in the rarefied air on top, there’s the masculine, the artistic, and the reliant on cultural patronage. That’s an exaggeration and simplification—but not by much. These attitudes dictate how we ascribe

Hamantaschen pastries,

The Paper Millionaire, by some Arab-turned-Englishman named Roger Shashoua. He sat

in my apartment? “Hi,” he said in his soft, effeminate voice. He was wearing a tweed sportcoat with large brown buttons, straight-legged polyester black slacks, and a black skullcap. I hadn’t talked to Dustin in more than a year, since before I had joined the community. Last I’d heard, he was managing a nightclub in Russia. He had sent me photos of

IT’S ALWAYS NEW AND ASTONISHING when it’s yours. Infatuation; sex; card tricks. How many humans have baked how many loaves of bread, across how many centuries? I’m sure Beoreg baked calmly, matter-of-factly, without paroxysms of cosmic delight. But that didn’t matter. For me, the novice, the miracle was intact, and I felt compelled by some force—ne