Sublime

All of these prolific geniuses in devotional service to their craft were  monsters . Writer Claire Dederer:  “[t]he female writers I know yearn to be more monstrous. They say it in off-hand, ha-ha-ha ways: ‘I wish I had a wife.’ What does that mean, really? It means you wish to abandon the tasks of nurturing in order to perform the selfis

As usual, Ashley lay wide awake, staring at the ceiling, listening to the sound of the crickets outside. She could feel tears in the corners of her eyes. She knew Brian was right. She was a rich man’s spoiled wife. And she was a dilettante. She’d never had the stick-to-itiveness, or whatever it took, to follow through on a project. It wasn’t that h

My childhood took place in the widening gap.

Aoife and I watch her shrink as she moves further away. My daughter asks, “Who was that lady, Daddy?” SO I ASK my daughter, “Who was what lady, darling?” Aoife blinks up at me. “What lady, Daddy?” We look at each other, and I’ve forgotten something. Wallet, phone; Aoife; Sharon’s wedding; Brighton Pier.

Children, however, don’t like having to be hyper-competent. So it’s not surprising that Charlotte wants me to be the mother for her now. I

Her few clothes hung austerely on a rail, and a television overlooked the foot of the bed; she watched it indiscriminately and with confusion, trying to make Bethesda’s child into an ordinary woman. And indeed she was ordinary, where certain essential matters were concerned – had not believed in hell since the day she’d laughed at the belt in her f

What type of life did her mother think she was living that she couldn’t interrupt with that type of news? They

She felt sure that she would have accepted the judicious Hooker,5 if she had been born in time to save him from that wretched mistake he made in matrimony; or John Milton when his blindness had come on; or any of the other great men whose odd habits it would have been glorious piety to endure; but an amiable handsome baronet, who said ‘Exactly’ to