Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Egan (@egangoonsquad) is trying out a new experiment with her story "Black Box". She's serializing the narrative on Twitter through the New Yorker's fiction account (@NYerFiction). From her post announcing the project: "My working title for this story was “Lessons Learned,” and my hope was to tell a story whose shape would emerge from the lessons the narrator derived from each step in the action, rather than from descriptions of the action itself...." Read more about her project here. And see the beginnings of the story, in Tweets, below.
People rarely look the way you expect them to, even when you’ve seen pictures.
— New Yorker Fiction (@NYerFiction) May 25, 2012
The first thirty seconds in a person’s presence are the most important.
— New Yorker Fiction (@NYerFiction) May 25, 2012
If you’re having trouble perceiving and projecting, focus on projecting.
— New Yorker Fiction (@NYerFiction) May 25, 2012
Necessary ingredients for a successful projection: giggles; bare legs; shyness.
— New Yorker Fiction (@NYerFiction) May 25, 2012
The goal is to be both irresistible and invisible.
— New Yorker Fiction (@NYerFiction) May 25, 2012
When you succeed, a certain sharpness will go out of his eyes.
— New Yorker Fiction (@NYerFiction) May 25, 2012
Some powerful men actually call their beauties “Beauty.”
— New Yorker Fiction (@NYerFiction) May 25, 2012
Counter to reputation, there is a deep camaraderie among beauties.
— New Yorker Fiction (@NYerFiction) May 25, 2012
If your Designated Mate is widely feared, the beauties at the house party where you’ve gone undercover to meet him will be especially kind.
— New Yorker Fiction (@NYerFiction) May 25, 2012
Kindness feels good, even when it’s based on a false notion of your identity and purpose.
— New Yorker Fiction (@NYerFiction) May 25, 2012
Posing as a beauty means not reading what you would like to read on a rocky shore in the South of France.
— New Yorker Fiction (@NYerFiction) May 25, 2012
Sunlight on bare skin can be as nourishing as food.
— New Yorker Fiction (@NYerFiction) May 25, 2012
Even a powerful man will be briefly self-conscious when he first disrobes to his bathing suit.
— New Yorker Fiction (@NYerFiction) May 25, 2012
It is technically impossible for a man to look better in a Speedo than in swim trunks.
— New Yorker Fiction (@NYerFiction) May 25, 2012
If you love someone with dark skin, white skin looks drained of something vital.
— New Yorker Fiction (@NYerFiction) May 25, 2012
When you know that a person is violent and ruthless, you will see violent ruthlessness in such basic things as his swim stroke.
— New Yorker Fiction (@NYerFiction) May 25, 2012
“What are you doing?” from your Designated Mate amid choppy waves after he has followed you into the sea may or may not betray suspicion.
— New Yorker Fiction (@NYerFiction) May 25, 2012
Read more here.Your reply—“Swimming”—may or may not be perceived as sarcasm.
— New Yorker Fiction (@NYerFiction) May 25, 2012
