Mike Albo

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  print June/July/Aug 2012

  The Money Plot

  Stanley Elkin’s The Magic Kingdom is about a man’s efforts to take a group of terminally ill children to Disney World. Published in 1985, it is about as unsentimental and hilarious a chronicle of the indignities of life as I’ve ever encountered. The language and wit of the narration, and the detail lavished on the wretchedly afflicted children, keep what is now a familiar trope—the Make-A-Wish phenomenon—very fresh. There is a funny sequence toward the beginning of the novel when the protagonist, Eddy Bale, himself a grieving father, gains an audience with the Queen of England. He hopes for a

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  culture August 16, 2011

  "The Junket"

  I am always afraid I am about to become one of those bitter New Yorkers. Someone with a constantly sour expression on his face and wrinkled, yellowy skin like an old front page. That person you see in the deli who screams: “Eight dollars for grapes? This city is for yuppies!”
  
  Not long ago, in 2009, I went on a trip that sort of put me on the fast track to becoming a bitter New Yorker

  I am always afraid I am about to become one of those bitter New Yorkers. Someone with a constantly sour expression on his face and wrinkled, yellowy skin like an old front page. That person you see in the deli who screams: “Eight dollars for grapes? This city is for yuppies!”

  Not long ago, in 2009, I went on a trip that sort of put me on the fast track to becoming a bitter New Yorker and I need to tell you about it before you find me raving on the street corner and nervously pass me by.

  This story needs to be told without much fictionalization or allegory, from my point of view. It’s not like