By James Baldwin Nugget February 1963 We, the writers—a word I am using in its most primitive sense—arrived in Chicago about ten days before the baffling, bruising, an unbelievable two minutes and six seconds at Comiskey Park. We will get to all that later. I know...
By Charles Simic Harvard Review Fall 2003 In one of Berenice Abbott’s photographs of the Lower East Side, I recall a store sign advertising Silk Underwear. Underneath, there was the additional information about “reasonable prices for peddlers.” How interesting, I...
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter April 7, 2010 I met Pete Dexter last fall when he was in New York promoting his seventh novel, Spooner. Dexter was a wonderful newspaper columnist and is now one of our greatest novelists. First thing I noticed about him was that he was...
By Elizabeth Kaye The Village Voice June 1972 A very big sign in red, white and blue reads, “Kennedy.” It is nailed across the front of a building three blocks from another building with another, smaller sign. This second sign is a map marked with numbers, and what I...
By Richard Ben Cramer Esquire October 1985 You probably heard of the case, the young woman from Bozeman, Montana, who got kidnapped by Mountain Men. Her name was Kari Swenson. She was a world-class biathlete. Last July, as she was training, running a trail near the...
By Red Smith The New York Times October 19, 1968 The four-hundred-meter race was over and in the catacombs of Estadio Olimpico Doug Roby, president of the United States Olympic Committee, was telling newspapermen that he had warned America’s runners against making any...
By Red Smith The New York Times June 11, 1973 The thing to remember is that the horse that finished last had broken the Kentucky Derby record. If there were no colt named Secretariat, then Sham would have gone into the Belmont Stakes Saturday honored as the finest...
By Elmore Leonard From Unknown Man No. 89 1977 Chapter One A friend of Ryan’s said to him one time, “Yeah, but at least you don’t take any shit from anybody.” Ryan said to his friend, “I don’t know, the way things’ve been going, maybe it’s about time I started taking...
By Bernard Malamud From The Natural 1952 Roy trailed the anonymous crowd out of Northwest Station and clung to the shadowy part of the wall till he had the courage to call a cab. “Do you go to the Stevens Hotel?” he asked, and the driver without a word shot off before...
By Pauline Kael The New Yorker November 17, 1986 For seven decades of romantic screwball comedies, sexy, smart, funny women have been waking up heroes who, through fear or shyness or a stuffy educational background, were denying their deepest impulses. The women...
By Charles Simic From Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell 1992 Preface I have a dream in which Joseph Cornell and I pass each other on the street. This is not beyond the realm of possibility. I walked the same New York neighborhoods that he did between 1958...
By Bill Zehme Spy April 1987 I remember Lee as he himself—were he able to remember anything now, God rest his soul—would have wanted to be remembered. Of this I am certain. Why, it was just two years ago when we huddled together in our booth at the Russian Tea Room,...
