New Paltz, New Paltz
001
126 pp
5" x 7.5 x 0.3"
1.24 lbs
June 25, 2025
978-1-965726-00-6
$18
I thanked the man
and left the store
and confetti fell slowly
inside my heart.
Ben is adrift. A fact-checker at a New York gossip magazine, he is well-versed in the breezy cruelty that makes the modern world go and yet hopelessly drawn to the wonders that world continues to turn up. The hypnotic asymmetry of escalators. A perfectly chilled water fountain. The essential freedom of dogs. Into the stream of this private joy steps a young woman whose general impertinence leads him back to questions about art, ambition, and intimacy he’d misplaced in the scatter that he—when pressed—calls his life.
File Under
ambivalent nostalgia, Balthus, bildungsroman, BINGO!, bullshit jobs, clumsy beauty, dealing in intangibles, dim obedience, dumb luck, escalators, happy accidents, killed time, the lives of others, lonely hearts, mechanical desire, minor celebrity, moving without moving, mundane surrealism, mystical things, only in New York, rare victory, setting the facts aside, shaggy dogs, signage, showmen, supposedly fun things, the trivial, unscripted life, vulnerable worlds, What Color Is Your Parachute?, young and broke
See Also
After Hours (1985)
John Ashbery - A Wave
Nicholson Baker - The Mezzanine
Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000-2024)
Witold Gombrowicz - Cosmos
Clarice Lispector - The Hour of the Star
High Maintenance (2012-2020)
Haruki Murakami - Pinball, 1973
Charles Portis - Norwood
Padgett Powell - Edisto
Slacker (1990)
James Tate - The Ghost Soldiers
Author
Mike Powell is a writer from Tucson, Arizona. His criticism and reporting have appeared in Pitchfork, The New York Times Magazine, The Ringer, and The Paris Review.