How could you waste any of this?
It happened at a restaurant.
Stand-up comedian John Bishop
Accents fascinate me. I’m guilty of half-listening to people, half trying to figure out their accent. If we watch John Bishop’s stand-up routines, my husband has to translate, since I understand maybe only every other word.
While I was in England for a gap year programme, I became aware of how accents are linked to the class system.
America, that slippery beast. One nation, one constitution, one currency: a framework for arguably the most diverse, remarkable and undefinable country in the world. But short stories are something of an American specialty; in 1962 Frank O’Connor described them as America’s national art form, and the roll call—from Cheever, Carver, and Yates to Yiyun Li, ZZ Packer, and Jhumpa Lahiri—is as much an illustration of the changing American imagination as anything else.
It took the combined efforts of Rich and MacPherson’s maid to pour the little man into his clothing. They shuffled him out the door braced between them. The windows were smothered in the thorn bright fire of bougainvillea. There were pepper and bottlebrush trees, a too-high cypress hedge, a fish pool with lotuses around which fat Japanese carp slivered a sloshing yellow.
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