New York
Parallel worlds: The Heavens, by Sandra Newman, reviewed
The Heavens is Sandra Newman’s eighth book. It follows novels featuring, variously, sex addiction, Buddhism and a post-apocalyptic teen dystopia;…
The death of New York’s nightlife
New York This is my last week in the Bagel and I’m going to give it the old college…
My prescription to make New York happy again
New York This place feels funny, a bit like Beirut, where Christians, Jews, Muslims, Druze and encamped Palestinians live…
Writing as revenge: Memories of the Future, by Siri Hustvedt, reviewed
Why are people interested in their past? One possible reason is that you can interact with it, recruiting it as…
Why did no one think the premise of Mums Make Porn was questionable?
What can parents do about the avalanche of pornography available to their children on tablet, phone and laptop? This question…
I’m back in New York: the city that’s perennially offended
New York Goodbye, snow-capped peaks; hello, swampy brown East River. So long, fresh alpine air; greetings to choking diesel…
New York: the fact – and fiction
New York At times I used to think the place was real. The New York of films, that is. The…
An extraordinary encounter in a New York taxi
New York If I wrote this in one of those newspaper diaries about metropolitan life, no one would believe…
A love letter to Brooklyn Heights
New York I now know it by heart. Brooklyn Heights, that is. It takes 35 minutes by cab from where…
Requiem for New York
New York In the dark she still looks good. The mystery and magnetism linger until dawn, then you slowly…
Why truth gets you nowhere
New York There is fear and loathing in this city, with men looking over their shoulders for the thought…
Partying with the Clintons
Gstaad The bells are ringing, the bells are ringing, ding dong, ding dong. The cows are down from up…
Taki: The forgotten heroes of Christmas
It’s that time of year again. Yippee! And get your wallets out. Scrooges are no longer tolerated at Christmas, although…
Drugs and drag queens in New York’s vanished clubland
In 2014 Michael Alig, impresario, party promoter and drug provider, was released on parole after 17 years in prison for…
Security overkill is terror’s real triumph
The moment the news broke on Halloween that an Uzbek in a rental truck had just killed eight people on…
Despite everything, America is beautiful — especially at West Point
What is left to say after the church shooting in the Home of the Depraved? Those killed in Texas included…
High life
I hate to say this, but the quality of life in the Bagel has crashed in a Harvey Weinstein-like way.…
Raw materials
‘Art by its very essence is of the new… There is only one healthy diet for artistic creation: permanent revolution.’…
On the waterfront
Much has been made of the American novelist Jennifer Egan’s mutation, in her latest novel, from purveyor of metafiction and…
Madness in Manhattan
Life has far more imagination than we do, says the epigraph from Truffaut that opens Salman Rushdie’s 12th novel —…
The listening project
As Classic FM celebrated its quarter-century on Wednesday with not a recording but a live broadcast of a concert from…
A choice of first novels
Remember Douglas Coupland? Remember Tama Janowitz? Remember Lisa St Aubin de Terán? Banana Yoshimoto? Françoise Sagan? The voice of your…
… trailing strands in all directions
Letters of Intent — letters of the intense. Keen readers of Cynthia Ozick (are there any other kind?) will of…
Salt-beef delirium
Katz’s Delicatessen, established 1888, is a theme park of Jewish-American food, with tribute gift shop, on the lower east side…
High life
New York If only my wordsmith friend Jeremy Clarke had been with me. What fun he’d have had with…
