Delayed Publication Notice — This issue, originally prepared for Autumn 1974, has been delayed due to a misunderstanding with time. Subscribers who have moved since then may inquire at the Post Office, which has also moved.
Ev'rybody's building the big ships and the boats
Some are building monuments
Others, jotting down notes
Ev'rybody's in despair
Ev'ry girl and boy
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here
Ev'rybody's gonna jump for joy
Come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn
— an unknown fiddler who left for the road
Time passes slowly up here in the mountains
We sit beside bridges and walk beside fountains
Catch the wild fishes that float through the stream
Time passes slowly when you're lost in a dream
— just another fiddler
The Tinder Box · A Column · Filed from Room 207
By Halley R. Fitch · Photographs developed in the bathtub
The neon sign had been buzzing the word VACANCY since the Eisenhower administration and I had no reason to believe it would stop on my account. I checked in under a name I borrowed from a paperback, paid in cash that smelled faintly of someone else's perfume, and was handed a brass key warm from the clerk's pocket. The carpet in the hallway had opinions about my shoes. The wallpaper had opinions about everything.
There was a small fire in the wastebasket of Room 207 when I arrived, which the previous occupant had apparently started on purpose and then forgotten about, the way other men forget umbrellas. I poured the ice bucket on it and sat down to write. Outside, a highway the color of cold coffee carried strangers toward more interesting trouble than mine, and the desk lamp made a noise like a wasp learning a second language.
I have been a correspondent for nineteen years and I can tell you with the certainty of a man who has slept in his suit that the country is not, as the magazines insist, divided. The country is simply tired, and pretending to be furious because fury is the only emotion still on sale at full price. Everything else has been marked down to move.
By midnight the fire was out, the bourbon was nearly out, and I was out of anything resembling a thesis. So I wrote what I always write when the deadline is a fist on the door: the truth, slightly drunk, in a voice I will deny in the morning. — H.R.F.
Five foundational columns. Each appears in every issue. Each is wired to the others.
Department
The psychology of AI anxiety and the dawn of a new species.
Ed. KW Norton
Department
Dispatches from the Twelfth Night place of permanent superposition.
Ed. KW Norton
Department
Rolling Home Exclusive — a supergroup convened by superposition.
Ed. KW Norton
Department
The notebook cross-examines the author. Defense becomes confirmation.
Ed. KW Norton
Department
Literary fusion — so what says Miles.
Ed. KW Norton
Item ·
A poet of some renown was seen ordering a second martini at the Algonquin and muttering, audibly, about the cowardice of footnotes. The bartender, a man of discretion, refused to corroborate.
Item ··
Our Reno correspondent reports that the last honest bookie in town has retired to grow tomatoes. The tomatoes, she writes, are also crooked, but in a more forgivable way.
Item ···
The Editor was, against all medical advice, spotted dancing at a wedding in Bisbee. He claims it was a different editor. We have decided to believe him for the duration of this paragraph.