Reluctant Habits

Agony.

(This is the thirty-second entry in The Modern Library Nonfiction Challenge, an ambitious project to read and write about the Modern Library Nonfiction books from #100 to #1.

(This is the forty-fourth entry in The Modern Library Reading Challenge, an ambitious project to read the entire Modern Library from #100 to #1.

(This is the thirty-first entry in The Modern Library Nonfiction Challenge, an ambitious project to read and write about the Modern Library Nonfiction books from #100 to #1.

(This is the forty-third entry in The Modern Library Reading Challenge, an ambitious project to read the entire Modern Library from #100 to #1.

(This is the thirtieth entry in The Modern Library Nonfiction Challenge, an ambitious project to read and write about the Modern Library Nonfiction books from #100 to #1.

I I was twenty-one when I first put a cigarette to my lips.

For a large chunk of Tuesday, just as the dust started to settle upon the tail of a particularly dystopian year, I kicked Jonathan V.

Charlie Kirk was not a hero.

[Scroll to the bottom of this post to listen to “Libromendel,” which was officially released today.]

(This is the forty-second entry in The Modern Library Reading Challenge, an ambitious project to read the entire Modern Library from #100 to #1.

On Sunday night, TikTok user @theshannonduke0 noticed something strange when she tried to stream Ridley Scott’s 2010 cinematic version of Robin Hood on Amazon Prime.

On the evening of March 28, 2025, at approximately 7:30 PM, comedian Jonathan Randall was standing in shock outside the Fear City Comedy Club, a relatively new venue on Essex Street owned and established by 56-year-old Swedish emigre Johan “Jonezy” Ankarc…

David Lynch has passed away.

Jimmy Carter, who served as our 39th President and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 for his selfless work in stumping for human rights, passed away at his home this afternoon at the age of 100.

On Friday, the U.S.

Jeff VanderMeer has had an incredibly toxic and unhealthy obsession with me for nearly twenty years.

Kate Tuttle is an unremarkable corporate windup doll who writes about books much in the same way that moribund losers sign up for macramé classes to make friends: namely, deadening the room with dull and desiccated sentences, life-sucking generalizations,…

Hey, you fucking motherfuckers!

We’ll probably never have a completely accurate tally of how many MAGA Cultists have been cut off and left in the cold this Thanksgiving, but we do know that a vast throng of fascists — including the hubris-fueled, dumb-as-rocks propagandist Jesse Watters…

Chuck Woolery is finally dead and I feel that I can walk into the wintry air with a modicum of relief and a new step in my stride.

After four days of being hit with death threats, pledges of violence directed towards me, one incident of doxxing, and outright hate from hundreds of MAGA cultists, I’ve noticed that they have started to make attempts to cozy up with me this weekend — as…

One of the truly unsettling paradigm shifts here in America is anticipating a diabolical world in which redress will be responded to with retaliation.

It has been only two days since the horrific election results were announced and, even in a “safe” blue spot like New York City, I have noticed an increased conformity.

America, as we once knew it and as we once lived it, is now dead.

In these years after my illness, when I can no longer speak and am set aside from the daily flow, I live more in my memory and discover that a great many things are safely stored away.

They drop.

I went on vacation to New Orleans — an attempt to celebrate my fiftieth birthday that ended in the worst way imaginable.

Of all the venal and easily purchased members of Congress who take AIPAC money in the manner of an eager head-bobbing whore pretzeling his position to show the money men just how limber and rentable he truly is (even at the expense of listening to constit…

It is difficult to overstate just how much of an impact Roger Corman had on American culture.