brooklyn writer” and you’ll get, Did you mean: the future of literature as we know it?

Mark Spitz didn’t ask about Harry. You never asked about the characters that disappeared from a Last Night story. You knew the answer. The plague had a knack for narrative closure.

Whoever has the better stuff wins. Sound familiar, American lackeys of late-stage capitalism?

I can’t blame modern technology for my predilection for distraction, not after all the hours I’ve spent watching lost balloons disappear into the clouds. I did it before the Internet, and I’ll do it after...

As it often did when I thought about chicken wings and entropy, my mind turned to Emerson. “Life is a journey, not a destination.” Now that was one stone-cold motherfucker who was not afraid to...

I’d never been much of an athlete, due to a physical condition I’d had since birth (unathleticism). Perhaps if there were a sport centered around lying on your couch in a neurotic stupor all day,...

Two people, two hands, and two songs, in this case “Big Shot” and “Bette Davis Eyes.” The lyrics of the two songs provided no commentary, honest or ironic, on the proceedings. They were merely there...

There was one moment of intersection, when the topic of hate-watching came up. “Why do you watch TV shows–and keep watching them–if you don’t like them?” Terrence asked.Simple: Some days, all you have is gazing...

Her father dropped her off in front of the place where she was to live and left the engine running. Lila Mae removed the two suitcases from the back of the pickup truck. The suitcases...

You swallow hard when you discover that the old coffee shop is now a chain pharmacy, that the place where you first kissed so-and-so is now a discount electronics retailer, that where you bought this...

It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect.

New York City in life was much like New York City in death. It was still hard to get a cab, for example.

Pain could be killed. Sadness could not, but the drugs did shut its mouth for a time.

The only time “early bloomer” has ever been applied to me is vis-a-vis my premature apprehension of the deep dread-of-existence thing. In all other cases, I plod and tromp along. My knuckles? Well dragged.

A society manufactures the heroes it requires.

We never see other people anyway, only the monsters we make of them.

There will be no redemption because the men who run this place do not want redemption. They want to be as near to hell as they can.

A monster is a person who has stopped pretending.

They don’t give gold bracelets for regrets.

In keeping with my family’s affection for doomed product lines and hexed formats, we purchased a Betamax. The year before, we’d bought a TRS-80 instead of an Apple II, and in due course we’d unbox...

Show, don’t tell,” but I stand by Show and Tell, because when writers put their work out into the world, they’re like kids bringing their broken unicorns and chewed-up teddy bears into class in the...

They jostled one another, competed for space below as they did above, in a minuet of ruin and triumph. In the subway, down in the dark, no citizen was more significant or more decrepit than...

Mark Spitz had met plenty of the divine-retribution folks over the months. This was their moment; they were umbrella salesmen standing outside a subway entrance in a downpour. The human race deserved the plague, we...

Here’s a tip for new parents: Start lowering those expectations early, it’s going to pay off later.

Nowdays, Rosie the Rivetere was a former soccer mom who had just opened her own catering business when Last Night came down and her husband and kids were eaten by a parking attendant at the...

As time went on, we learned to arm ourselves in our different ways. Some of us with real guns, some of us with more ephemeral weapons, an idea or improbable plan or some sort of...

He imagined a town called A. Around the communal fire they’re shaping arrowheads and carving tributes o the god of the hunt. One day some guys with spears come over the ridge, perform all kinds...