I have been catching up on reading short stories in The New Yorker, one of my favorite past-times. Cynthia Ozick’s story, “The Biographer’s Hat,” is a Broolyn-esque Singer-esque story about lonely lives in the urban penumbra. An interesting window into the 1950s, also.

Tessa Hadley’s story, “After the Funeral,” continues with her characteristic (for me) brief pivots of point of view (like Godard’s device, I suppose, in film in the 1960s). This is a rich, complex family dynamic story, and I bet about a third of all people in wealthy (non-village) countries would recognize the dynamic for themselves or someone they know. I am sure family systems therapists have whole books on the “case.”