This from a man who'd once said he'd die without her, who'd written her piles of letters after she'd rejected him, back in graduate school-though graduate school makes it sound more serious than it was.
They'd gone to a university to become fiction writers. The degree took two years.
During this time, Toni slept with several of her peers but not with the man who eventually became her child's father. He left letters in her mailbox about how much this pained him. But he was too odd, she thought, terribly intense, with a work ethic that made her ashamed of her own and a burrowing gaze that at once flattered and repelled. He was skinny and had a ponytail. He carried a briefcase. He didn't die for lack of her, despite what his letter warned.
It wasn't until a decade had passed, when she was working as a waitress in a small New England city and had just broken up with a bartender named Dusty, when she had given up writing, all early sense of specialness evaporated, that she decided to reach out to him. He was happy to hear from her, her old suitor said, thought about her sometimes, wondered how she was. Was she still writing fiction? Now and then, she lied. He'd always loved her prose style, he told her.
He himself had two novel drafts and was finishing a Ph.D. in a city a few hours away. The next weekend, she took a train.
Esta historia es de la edición July 29, 2024 de The New Yorker.
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Esta historia es de la edición July 29, 2024 de The New Yorker.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
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MIRROR IMAGES
‘A Different Man” and The Substance.”
THE FOOTBALL BRO
Pat McAfee brings a casual new style to ESPN.
OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY
Proximity to wealth proves perilous in Rumaan Alam’ novel Entitlement.”
EYES WIDE SHUT
How Monet shared a private world.
WITH THE MOSTEST
The very rich hours of Pamela Harriman.
HUGO HAMILTON AUTOBAHN
On the Autobahn outside Frankfurt. November. The fields were covered in a thin sheet of snow.
TRY IT ON
How Law Roach reimagined red-carpet style.
SORRY I'M NOT YOUR CLOWN TODAY
Bowen Yang's trip to Oz, by way of conversion therapy and S..N.L.”
SNIFF TEST
A maverick perfumer tries to make his mark on a storied fashion house.
LET'S HAVE A LONG TALK ABOUT OUR RELATIONSHIP JUST BEFORE BED!
Babe, are you nodding off? I know we’re both exhausted after a long day, a dinner party at which you made a three-word comment that left me feeling like you don’t know me at all, and the subsequent ninety-minute fight that culminated in a tentative truce.