Sublime

phlegmatic.

a personage whose refrigerator-like build, rubbery face, and heavy eyelids brought to mind some anthropomorphic piece of furniture in a Disney movie.

meaner. That morning, he’d brought me into the station, placed his thick hands on my shoulders. “This is my boy,” he said. “Your old man’s a hard-ass, kid,” said another detective. “Are you a hard-ass, too?” I shrugged. They laughed. “Send him down to Vice,” another detective said. “Pop his cherry.” They wore suits and fedoras and smoked cigarettes

of outlandish facts and quotes—he is a tenacious reporter—and a style that barely suppresses his own amusement. It works particularly well on the buccaneers who continue to try the patience of the citizenry, as proved by his profile in The New Yorker of the developer Donald Trump. Noting that Trump “had aspired to and achieved the ultimate luxury,

Sorrentino’s Aberration of Starlight,