Scribner Books

“‘I gotta stay in the West Village, or I gotta stay in the Lower East Side. I want someplace real.’ And then after a month in the Lower East Side, during the New York heat wave, I was like, ‘Okay, you know what? I’m 42 years old. I think I’m done. I’ve had enough of the “real.” This would’ve been great when I was 19, this is friggin’ horrible now.’ I would open the doors to the hotel in the lobby, and even the two doormen would look back, like, ‘All right, dude, here it comes,’ and just this wave of garbage air would pummel you. It was like a shockwave of stink. I was almost excited to do it in the morning to see what new, horrible smell would come down there.”

—Patton Oswalt, in an interview with the A.V. Club

August in NY is never pretty, Patton.

It did not, as a matter of fact, start from happy for either of them. Imogene Gilfeather had just had a cruel haircut and for this reason, or maybe another, expressed little interest that night when the fellow sitting next to her on the bus down Broadway said he knew the perfect guy for her.

“Perfect,” said Imogene Gilfeather, “is not my type.”

She could happily buy groceries and weed the garden because everyone she cared about was well.

But if someone were to try to threaten that? Was there a length to which a mother wouldn’t go?

—Jennifer Vanderbes, Strangers at the Feast

…for 11 years!

“Barnes & Noble is now closed. I’m the last resource for books. I’m here from 7 to 7 every day.”

(Even Google Street View caught him.) Wander by, he’s on 68th & Columbus and so is his book-filled car.

Thanks, Shelf Awareness. And video of street-cleaning action here.