At an age when most young Scotsmen were lifting skirts, plowing furrows and spreading seed, Mungo Park was displaying his bare buttocks to Ali Ibn Haj’ Fatoudi, emir of Ludamar. The year was 1795. 

“We must go deeper,” Cousteau says. He is haggard, worn to bone, his splendid Gallic nose a wedge driven into his face. He uses his utensils to illustrate — his fork has become a crane, his spoon the

Somehow, she found herself backed up against the artichoke display in the fruit and vegetable department at Waldbaum’s, feeling as lost and hopeless as an orphan. She was wearing her dun safari shorts

He was no Joltin’ Joe, no Sultan of Swat, no Iron Man. For one thing, his feet hurt. And God knows no legendary immortal ever suffered so prosaic a complaint.

Mao flicks on the radio. Music fills the room, half-notes like the feet of birds. It is a martial tune, the prelude from “The Long March.” Then there are quotations from Chairman Mao, read in a voice saturated

“IT ALL STARTED ONE AFTERNOON WHEN I WAS LOOKING AROUND FOR SOMETHING UNUSUAL TO WEAR ON MY HEAD.”

“EVIDENTLY THE USE OF SEA SHELLS IS AS VARIED AS YOU CARE TO MAKE IT.”

When Erica took a leave of absence to complete her research she knew almost immediately that she would fail. She devised lists of people to telephone, penciled in a schedule of interviews and columns with questions. Her handwriting seemed small and bruised. She called no one.

Owning the proper gun is very important to someone like me who does not need one and who is usually inclined to repress his more suggestive wants.

My sister threw open the door so that it banged against the little console table she kept by the entrance. “Silas,” she said breathlessly, before even removing her coat, “I have to tell you something.” Which was enough to make me feel trapped, as though the words out of her mouth were expanding and filling up the space in her tiny apartment. I told her to calm down and apologized, and then I began making excuses for myself. I had assumed she would be angry at me because of the previous night, so I was primed for what she might say when she got home from work.

The morning of February 18, 1947, three months to the day after my marriage, found me stumbling through the Want-Ads in the Times. I had been reading them daily for some time in order to give the impression to a certain person that I still believed that someone might really hire me.