“‘Jimi Hendrix died,’ my stepdad said through the window in the radio room, or maybe I just overheard him announce it to someone through that black microphone. I did know, even at ten, who Jimi Hendrix was. I was surprised my dad knew.” Marisa Mangani on recurrently remembering the death of a legend.
“I ignored that thought and said, I’ll bring his first album in tomorrow, if you like. You can borrow it and burn a copy, and he said, thanks, though really I don’t think he cared either way, or was particularly interested in hearing this DJ Rupture, it would make him look uncool, and even if he did end up liking it, he couldn’t say so, not in public anyway, or to me.” Stephen Mander tells the story of a CD he’s never getting back.
Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter responsible for The Art of the Deal—and he seems to think, Donald Trump himself—has come forward to say that he pretty much hates Donald Trump and is sorry he wrote the book. One of his grudges seems to be that Trump claimed to have written the book that Mr. Schwartz himself…
In our last Punchcard, we talked about the virtues of reading (books mostly). This week, we’re talking about one of books’ chief competitors—after streaming video, Pokemon Go, and competitive bass fishing. Namely, reading on the Internet. Since springing fully formed from the loins of Al Gore in the nineteen-nineties, the Internet has become a vast, ever-changing repository of written…
Readers sometimes have an uncertain relationship with the act of reading. We want it to be good for us—we want there to be some moral/mental/spiritual justification for the fact that we spend our leisure time losing ourselves in someone else’s words. Couldn’t you argue, after all, that reading encourages empathy? And we could all use…
I am normal, I think, in all regards except for the fact that I still live with my parents. I read somewhere or heard somewhere not long ago that more and more adults these days live with their parents. It is comforting to know that I, that my girlfriend and I, are not in a league of our own, so to speak.
“Once, a boy received a low grade, the lowest we could receive: a “U,” unsatisfactory. I remember he had sandy hair and very blue eyes. I think his name was Tommy. He cried, loud, heaving tears that made him hiccup and splotched his face red. Eventually, a nurse escorted him from the classroom.” Carla Dash on avoiding undue effort.