Jess’s Reviews > The Throwback Special > Status Update

Scattered in the fountain’s arid basin was a constellation of couns, whitish and crusted. Robert gripped the yellow tape, started at the desiccated wishes.

So why was he doing this? What was his problem? Why did he insist on turning something fun into a grave American ordeal?

It could be said of Steven, as it could be said of each man, that he was the plant manager of a sophisticated psychological refinery, capable of converting vast quantities of crude ridicule into tiny, glittering nuggets of sentiment.

Back with my guys for round #6

Scattered in the fountain’s arid basin was a constellation of coins, whitish and crusted. Robert gripped the yellow tape, stared at the desiccated wishes. There was nothing, he considered, more dry than an inoperative fountain.

You were never actually halfway through your life. Not really. Not in the sense that you were halfway though a cord of winter firewood, or a tank of gas, or a trip home from the beach, or the one cocktail you allowed yourself on a weeknight. ... You were always, instant by instant, at the very edge of your life, at the end of it, in its entirety, and so never at any point, Carl considered, in the middle.

Peter’s hair was wavy and wiry. It was brittle and lifeless, like something partially buried in an ancient seabed. It was both thick and thinning. At the crown of his head a turbulent cowlick seemed to be churning toward landfall, forcing evacuation in low-lying areas.