A WRITER'S WIT Heterosexuals get drunk and pregnant, producing unwanted children; their reward is to be allowed to marry. Homosexual couples do not produce unwanted children; their reward is to be denied the right to marry. Go figure. ​Michelangelo Signorile Born December 19, 1960

New Yorker Fiction 2016

M. Cattelan & P. Ferrari

A WRITER'S WIT Of all the icey blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling and havoc-wreaking. ​Gustave Flaubert ​Born December 12, 1821

New Yorker Fiction 2016

Alex Merto

“He did not write Merrill back. He did not put his name to the poetition.
 
As soon as he had not done these things, he rose up from his chair. He went not to the window but to the area between the chair and the sofa. He stood there with hands balled into shaking fists. Silently and exultantly he roared, Never give in. Never not resist” (69).

A WRITER'S WIT Many questions can be answered “yes” or “no” only by a moron or a slave. ​Dalton Trumbo ​Born December 9, 1905

My Book World

I'VE MADE IT MY GOAL to read the entire oeuvre of late British-American author, Christopher Isherwood, over a twelve-month period. This profile constitutes the last in a series of twenty-four. The task has taken me a bit longer than a year, but the fruits of my labor have been many. To read all the works of an author like Isherwood is to know him, as much as anyone can know a writer. To read all his works—fiction, nonfiction, dramatic, travel, diary—is to know that writers can stretch. They are not saddled with the same genre, and each experience adds depth when they return to the genres they're more comfortable with. Most of all, writers can begin in their twenties and continue to write all their lives. RJ

“Meanwhile, my life is still beautiful to me—beautiful because of Don, because of the enduring, fascination of my efforts to describe my life experience in my writing, my fellow travelers on this journey. How I wish I were able to reassure them that all is ultimately well—particularly those who are quite certain that it isn’t; that life is meaningless and  unjust! I can’t reassure them, because I can’t speak with the absolute authority of a knower.
 
All I can offer them is this book, which I have written about matters I only partially understand, in the hope that it my somehow, to some readers, reveal glimpses of inner truth which remain hidden from its author” (338).

A WRITER'S WIT Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing. ​Joan Didion ​Born December 5, 1934

New Yorker Fiction 2016

Ryan Heshka

“No matter. People will talk. It could also be that I’m dreaming him like that—tiny—because it’s a way of distancing myself, but that’s a bit Freudian, don’t you think? As though there were some kind of intelligence driving all this—the subconscious or some bullshit like that. Something I find hard to believe in. Why would I want to be distanced, anyway? There’s nothing I’m still afraid of” (73)