July 2011
7 posts
June 2011
11 posts
An Even Keel
On a Brooklyn-bound F around nine last night, I sat next to a couple with a baby in a stroller, who were talking to the people across from them, also a couple, also with a baby in a stroller. The entire ride from Fourteenth Street to back to Brownstone Brooklyn, they talked about babies: Whether the other couple had wanted to know the sex in advance, if they were planning to expand their families,...
Hell, she has officially frozen over. I am on Twitter (@meredithturits). Come say hi.
(And, speaking of saying hi, a really, really big “hi and thank you” to the thousand or so new followers I’ve accrued lately. You are all ridiculously lovely.)
File under “Things That Never Get Old”: Seeing your byline on the first, printed-out draft of the newest project on which you’re working…even though you’ve typed it yourself, and even though said draft is about to be covered in your red pen. Psh, details.
“It looks like my writing has been dressed up in a tuxedo!”
– Karen Russell upon seeing her first publication in the New Yorker, from “How I Started,” June 20, 2011
And Who'd Have Thought
For those who grew up with the New York skyline in their peripheries, we often find ourselves hard-pressed to be really floored. Notable exceptions:
A first trip to Wrigley Field after sixty-four years as a New York resident, with memories that include Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds (your zeal is palpable, Dad)
Discovery of an authentic, mint vintage Chanel belt in an unassuming Prospect...
The only productive thing that’s come from years of developing cat-like flash sale reflexes (Gilt Groupe will be blamed for my future bankruptcy) is today’s score of two free tickets to Monday’s New Yorker Big Story. Jennifer Egan, Nathan Englander, Karen Russell and Deborah Treisman (next to whom I rode in the elevator yesterday while blushing like an intern) on the wildly...
The absolute worst thing about my insomnia is not that I’m nocturnal-levels of wide awake at four a.m., finishing the book I’m reading, and writing at my computer, but that I live above a bagel store—in Brooklyn, mind you—that starts baking around the same time.
Settle down, senses; that scent is only a figment of your imagination, I swear.
Take Shelter and Hold Tight
As writers, we generally think more about life than we do death; it’s simply in virtue of having to construct an entire existence of a character, orchestrate his moves as he navigates his world, decide what kind of person he’s going to be, etc. And, as people, we generally think more about life than we do death, as well, mostly because death is unknown and frightening and far...
This morning, a man across from me spent the better part of our train ride trying to catch my eyes. Each time he did, his glance darted back down to his paper—the Times or the Wall Street Journal, I couldn’t discern which from my seat opposite him—where he rustled the papers, and deliberately turned the pages. Between guilty glances and occasional smiles, I watched him flip each...