“It’s brutal out there,” I greet Kathryn Harrison, after emerging from a sweltering New York City subway ride to Park Slope.“It’s brutal in here, too,” the author replies. Her solid, high-ceilinged 1882 building has no air conditioning.Kathryn Harrison knows from brutal—and not just in terms of weather. She survived a firestorm of controversy after “The Kiss,” her memoir about an incestuous relationship with her father, was published in 1997.

About 500 of us are huddled along the homestretch rail at Mountaineer Park in Chester, W.Va.—a lower rung of Thoroughbred racing. It’s late into a chilly September evening; we’re waiting for the horses of the ninth race to be loaded into the gates.

I should begin by clarifying my plea: I am pleading guilty to exceeding the 50 mph limit, but I am pleading not guilty to exceeding the limit by 20 mph.

I took the train into downtown Osaka on a Tuesday afternoon to get my alien registration card. I was going to school at a university in one of Osaka’s suburbs and living with a family in one of the suburb’s suburbs—in a neighborhood where the houses were packed so tightly you could go for blocks across the rooftops without ever having to jump.

A gay, white professor takes a job at a historically all-black women’s university

“Don’t be mad,” I telegram Steve, care of the American Express office in Amsterdam. Heading off alone. See you in India.” The telegram takes a startling $4.50 out of the $70 I have left after paying for my hotel. Steve has the other $600. I feel some concern about this, but I stuff the $65.50 into my jeans pocket and walk out of the telegraph office into the streets of Luxembourg.

The car gleamed under the Alabama sunlight. While the sun was still in its early-morning warming mode, I had risen from my bed, moved the hosepipe from the front yard to the driveway in the rear of the house and driven my car, a 1979 Datsun 200SX, to the middle of the driveway.

The fourth rule of the waiting room is “Thou shalt not talk about the waiting room,” and the first rule of the waiting room is “Thou shalt not make the other patients feel crazy"...

I guess if you look at it through the twisted lens through which men tend to view the world, you could make the argument that I started the conversation.Standing outside the recovery center during the smoke break we always took at the one-hour mark, I noticed that Mike, who ran the group, had stepped away to speak with Karen in private.

Prior to my homecoming visit to Alabama, I had frequently been in contact with the newly appointed editor of The New Yorker, Tina Brown, a 40-year-old British-born, Oxford-educated blonde who reminded me of my high school English teacher—a comely, decorous and demanding taskmistress, who was often at the center of my teenage erotic fantasies and who was the first woman to personify for me the awesome combination of sex appeal and professional power.In