July 2011 Archives
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Our Bodies, Ourselves
Your Third Nipple
All your life, you thought you just had an odd-looking little mole. From 2011, what it’s like when a doctor says that you belong in the ranks of Marky Mark, centuries of witches, and Krusty the Clown.
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Sound Advice
Dear Mr. Jesus
The ’90s for me were more Lollapalooza than Nickelodeon, so I’ve never actually seen Clarissa Explains It All, but whatever. That pop-culture nostalgia reminds me of another...
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Personal Essays
The Crap in My Head
Little things people say can get stuck in your brain and become triggers, forcing you to relive moments you’d rather forget. Well, for aspiring linguists, it’s much, much worse.
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Portraits by Other Means
Trials, Triumphs, and What They Wore
I though it was a beautiful combination, but the sartorial law quickly taught me that my body could not necessarily be draped in my whims. It was important lesson: Even...
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The Biblioracle
Summer Reading With the Biblioracle
Summer is reading’s high season. But all good books must come to an end, and then what do you do? Have no fear—the Biblioracle is here. Discover your next favorite novel today, from 2-3:00 p.m. ET.
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Road Tripping
Columbus to Cambria and Back Again
From coast to coast, through bickering passengers and aggressive tumbleweeds, we’ve crisscrossed the U.S.—and often ended up in New York. For your next road trip, a guide to what you’ll see along the way.
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Crushes on Strangers
The Barista
“Congratulations!” he writes back. “No, it’s the worst,” I respond. “I can’t concentrate. I’m being weird. It’s...
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Gallery
Animal Affective
Your dog sleeps in your bed, and there’s a picture of him in your wallet, but could you love a deer? How about a skunk? Lions, tigers, bears, and the Americans who love them—perhaps too much.
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Eurozonia
We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Bucket
Following an emergency meeting of Eurozone countries on July 21, a “Marshall Plan” for Europe was announced and a virtual European International Monetary Fund created. A Marshall Plan for...
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The Future of Publishing
Much Ado About Whatever
Tao Lin and his band of followers at Muumuu House are some of the most vehemently disliked—and discussed—writers on the internet. Critics call them hip. Haters call them frauds. But their fiction may be just what our digital lives deserve.
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Late Night Sports Radio
Voices in the Country
I’m in rural Chatham County, NC, with three acres, heavy woods with eight kinds of trees, and a creek. Crickets, cicadas, and tree frogs are chiming—the...
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The True Meaning of T-Pain
Tallahassle
Florida is America’s most-abused state, and Tallahassee its biggest target for bi-coastal writers who pick low-hanging fruit—rednecks, old people—and wouldn’t know an alligator from their elbow. The slander has gone far enough. On behalf of every Tallahussey and T-Town man, let the corrections begin.
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My Contemporary British TV Detectives
Gently Does It
Many other things we do extremely well in this golden age of the small screen. Novelists with epaulets are signing up to bang out series. David Foster Wallace thought...
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Birnbaum V.
Jim Shepard
Our man in Boston and Jim Shepard, the author most recently of You Think That’s Bad, discuss whacko projects, researching short stories by jet, and how much gold it takes for a writer to dump Knopf’s Gary Fisketjon.
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TMN Talks
Nom de Plume
Ciuraru has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications. She has also edited...
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Gallery
Experimental Relationship
Photographs that ask why romantic relationships should look the same. For example, why can’t one partner be a piece of homemade sushi?
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Portraits by Other Means
Our Better Halves
Pearl I, II, and III, Shorthaired Pointers [Robert Parker] preferred staying in and watching baseball games with his German shorthaired pointer, Pearl. Mr. Parker had three German shorthairs named Pearl;...
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Belly Aching
The Hand That Feeds You
Though you can still count on it for antibiotic-free cheese, the farmers’ market has become a macrocosm of first-world food neuroses. True stories from behind the rustic wax-paper-lined baskets.
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Sound Advice
Girls, You Never Know
OK, so my gay BFF in high school didn’t really fit the stereotype, except that he did always give excellent advice. But it wasn’t just the...
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Men Are From Mars, Pugs Are From Chelsea
Drawn to Dogs
Pet people and non-pet people are different breeds for whom inter-species communication can be impossible. Then along comes the ugliest dog in the world. A study of one heart’s redoing.
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Eurozonia
The Doom Abides
My explanation was pathetic. Being so close to Europe in my heart and so heavily invested in all of it in my relationship, my work, and my future, it&rsquo...
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New York, New York
Here Is Everything I Learned in New York City
Five years in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Several violent attacks—in other cities. A daily attempt to be the best, which is never a good idea. Nine lessons from a mini-lifetime in the Big Apple.
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Portraits by Other Means
The Diets of Others
The Terrorist Diet [In Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden] no longer slaughtered a lamb every day to serve his guests; now he rarely ate meat, preferring to live on dates, milk,...
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The Heartland Never Lies
The Sex Trade in Northwest Wisconsin
In a small town with a withering economy, rebellion is choosing college over your job at the X-rated drive-in.
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Late Night Sports Radio
The Best Viola Player in the New York Phil Is a Bum
It’s 3:43 a.m. and I’m listening to the overnight call-in program on WFAN sports radio out of New York, 660 on the AM dial. The station&rsquo...
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American Letters
The Man Behind the Window
Allan Seager was a student at Oxford when he contracted tuberculosis. What happened next made him one of America’s greatest writers—declared the heir to Anderson and Hemingway—ever to be forgotten. Yet one of Seager’s short stories endures in ways that none of Hemingway’s can match.
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Personal Essays
The Age of Mechanical Reproduction
When it comes to in-vitro fertilization, nothing is normal. Your world is upside-down. Your doctor compliments your wife on her monkeys. Then, when every dollar and exertion has gone toward a single hour of hope, it begins to snow.
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Opinions
Les Bêtes Fromages
America adores its clichés about French culture—skinny women, hot sex, and “surrender monkeys.” But the Mali intervention shows France in a different light. From 2011, an appreciation for France’s history of conquering and oppressing the world.
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From the Editors
A Year in the Life of a Redesign
Even then, better to ignore the reasons than enter months of mockups, head-to-wall banging, interminable revisions, and the inevitable trip to the Genius Bar, bruised laptop in hand. Instead, we...