“Noel is in our living room shaking his head. He refused my offer and then David’s offer of a drink, but he has had three glasses of water. It is absurd to wonder at such a time when he will get up to go to the bathroom, but I do. I would like to see Noel move; he seems so rigid that I forget to sympathize, forget he is a real person. “That’s not what I want,” he said to David when David began sympathizing. Absurd, at such a time, to ask what he does want. I can’t remember how it came about that David started bringing glasses of water.”
— first couple lines from VERMONT in Ann Beattie’s THE NEW YORKER STORIES
Do You Notice Anything Different About This Toy Catalog? Because Kids Do.
Toys “R” Us officially moved up a few notches in the eyes of progressives by challenging the gender stereotypes that have lined its pages for years. The Swedish version of the toy store did at least. I definitely like the idea of letting kids choose what they want to identify with instead of having it spelled out for them. I really hope this catches on.
“The author, whose novels thrum with ironic recurrences, might have been perversely pleased with this: thirty-six years after his death and twenty-two years after the fall of the Soviet Union with all its khudsovets, Vladimir Nabokov is, once again, controversial.”