English
0 min 70 min
The Aspiring Idiot
USA
In March I received an invitation to appear at IdiotFest, the second most prestigious event on the entire Idiot circuit. I called my mother. ─IdiotFest? ─Don’t you remember, Mom? It was in San Diego last year....
The Aspiring Idiot
Todd Hasak-Lowy
17 min
Haircut
USA
I got another barber that comes over from Carterville and helps me out Saturdays, but the rest of the time I can get along all right alone. You can see for yourself that this ain’t no...
Haircut
Ring Lardner
19 min
Time and Again
USA
Mr. Weeks called me out again tonight, and I look back down the hall of my house. I left the kitchen light burning. This is an empty old house since the old lady died. When Mr....
Time and Again
Breece D'J Pancake
6 min
Death of the Pugilist (Or, the famous battle of Jacob Burke & Blindman McGraw)
USA
Who was Burke? His beginnings.   Born a caulbearer in the Bristol slums, in the quayside heap known only as “the Rat,” Jacob Burke, who would battle the great McGraw on that fateful day in 1824,...
Death of the Pugilist (Or, the famous battle of Jacob Burke & Blindman McGraw)
Daniel Mason
23 min
The Real Thing
UK
When the porter’s wife (she used to answer the house-bell), announced “A gentleman—with a lady, sir,” I had, as I often had in those days, for the wish was father to the thought, an immediate vision...
The Real Thing
Henry James
42 min
The Prophetic Pictures
USA
“But this painter!” cried Walter Ludlow, with animation. “He not only excels in his peculiar art, but possesses vast acquirements in all other learning and science. He talks Hebrew with Dr. Mather and gives lectures in...
The Prophetic Pictures
Nathaniel Hawthorne
20 min
The Last Thing We Need
USA
July 28 Duane Moser 1077 Pincay Drive Henderson, Nevada 89015   Dear Mr Moser On the afternoon of June 25 while on my last outing to Rhyolite, I was driving down Cane Springs Road some ten...
The Last Thing We Need
Claire Vaye Watkins
16 min
Some Terpsichore
USA
There’s a handsaw hanging on the wall of my living room, a house key from a giant’s pocket. It’s been there a long time. “What’s your saw for?” people ask, and I say, “It’s not my...
Some Terpsichore
Elizabeth McCracken
18 min
The Ransom of Red Chief
USA
It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, In Alabama—Bill Driscoll and myself—when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, “during a moment...
The Ransom of Red Chief
O. Henry
16 min
The Purloined Letter
USA
Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio. Seneca.   At Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the autumn of 18–, I was enjoying the twofold luxury of meditation and a meerschaum, in company with my friend...
The Purloined Letter
Edgar Allan Poe
28 min
An Alcoholic Case
USA
‘Let–go–that–Oh-h-h! Please, now, will you? Don’t start drinking again! Come on–give me the bottle. I told you I’d stay awake givin’ it to you. Come on. If you do like that a-way–then what are you going to be...
An Alcoholic Case
F. Scott Fitzgerald
9 min
The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids
USA
  The Paradise of Bachelors It lies not far from Temple-Bar. Going to it, by the usual way, is like stealing from a heated plain into some cool, deep glen, shady among harboring hills. Sick with...
The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids
Herman Melville
32 min
I Stand Here Ironing
USA
I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron. “I wish you would manage the time to come in and talk with me about your daughter. I’m sure...
I Stand Here Ironing
Tillie Olsen
9 min
Ten Kliks South
USA
This morning our gun dropped about 270 pounds of ICM on a smuggler’s checkpoint ten kliks south of us. We took out a group of insurgents and then we went to the Fallujah chow hall for...
Ten Kliks South
Phil Klay
15 min
The Gift of the Magi
USA
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until...
The Gift of the Magi
O. Henry
8 min
The Northeast Kingdom
USA
He had always believed that his immortality would take the form of the Aerojet. The two-stage, solid-fuel boost rocket had been, in its time, one of the crowning achievements of human technology — the first apparatus to...
The Northeast Kingdom
Nathaniel Rich
41 min
Emerald City
USA
Rory knew before he came to New York what sort of life he would have. He’d read about it in novels by hip young authors who lived there. He saw the apartment, small but high-ceilinged, a...
Emerald City
Jennifer Egan
14 min
Light and Space
UK
The object is a pillar of resin, 10 feet in height, four feet in diameter. It is glossy enough that if the light is at your back, you can see your reflection, but also translucent enough...
Light and Space
Ned Beauman
12 min
Safe Passage
USA
THE GRANDMOTHERS — dozens of them — find themselves at sea. They do not know how they got there. It seems to be after­noon, the glare from the sun keeps them squinting. They wander carefully, canes...
Safe Passage
Ramona Ausubel
15 min
Biography of a Dress
USA
This dress I am wearing in this black-and-white photograph, taken when I was two years old, was a yellow dress made of cotton poplin (a fabric with a slightly unsmooth texture first manufactured in the French...
Biography of a Dress
Jamaica Kincaid
9 min
No News, or What Killed the Dog?
USA
It was a day of holocausts, cataclysms, tornadoes, earthquakes, blackouts, mass murders, eruptions, and miscellaneous dooms, at the peak of which the sun swallowed the earth and the stars vanished. But to put it simply, the...
No News, or What Killed the Dog?
Ray Bradbury
9 min
How to Talk to Your Mother (notes)
USA
1982. Without her, for years now, murmur at the defrosting refrigerator, “What?” “Huh?” “Shush now,” as it creaks, aches, groans until the final ice block drops from the ceiling of the freezer like something vanquished. Dream, and...
How to Talk to Your Mother (notes)
Lorrie Moore
11 min
A Manual for Cleaning Women
USA
42–PIEDMONT. Slow bus to Jack London Square. Maids and old ladies. I sat next to an old blind woman who was reading Braille, her finger gliding across the page, slow and quiet, line after line. It...
A Manual for Cleaning Women
Lucia Berlin
14 min
Mermaid in the Jar
Canada
I have a mermaid in a jar that Quilty bought me at a garage sale for twenty-five cents. The mermaid’s all, “I hate you I hate you I hate you,” but she’s in a jar, and...
Mermaid in the Jar
Sheila Heti
1 min
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