That's What I Always Liked

On That Night I Was Left With Only The Truth That Nothing Of Our Personality Survives After Death, That In The End All That Was Misha Vainberg Would Evaporate Along With The Styles And Delusions Of His Epoch, Leaving Behind Not One Flutter Of His Sad Heavy Brilliance, Not One Damp Spot Around Which His Successors Could Congregate To Appreciate His Life And Times.

If You're Not Fascinated By Korea Yet, You Damn Well Should Be. The Most Innovative Country On Earth Deserves A Hilarious And Poignant Account On The Order Of Euny Hong's The Birth Of Korean Cool. Her Phat Beats Got Gangnam Style And Then Some.

... I'm The Fortieth-ugliest Man In This Bar. But So What! So What! What If Someday She Lets Me Kiss Each One Of Her Freckles Again? She Has Like A Million. But Every One Of Them Means Something To Me. Isn't This How People Used To Fall In Love? I Know We're Living In Rubenstein's America, Like You Keep Saying. But Doesn't That Just Make Us Even More Responsible For Each Other's Fates? I Mean, What If Eunice And I Just Said No To All This. To This Bar. To This Facing. The Two Of Us. What If We Just Went Home And Read Books To Each Other?

Good Fiction Makes Me Turn Off All The Other Parts Of My Brain, So That I Become Quiet And Submissive, Entirely At The Mercy Of The Work At Hand.

Then I Celebrated My Wall Of Books. I Counted The Volumes On My Twenty-foot-long Modernist Bookshelf To Make Sure None Had Been Misplaced Or Used As Kindling By My Subtenant. “you’re My Sacred Ones,” I Told The Books. “no One But Me Still Cares About You. But I’m Going To Keep You With Me Forever. And One Day I’ll Make You Important Again.” I Thought About That Terrible Calumny Of The New Generation: That Books Smell.