I remember it as a sad year. I was a freshman at Wayne, commuting like everyone else. I never met girls, and I couldn’t even imagine hooking up with the ones in my class. People checked each other out, but mostly you felt too awkward to approach anyone. We were all 18, 19, sober and thinking of the kids who got to live in real dorm rooms. We were a weird mix of kids who hadn’t done well enough and who’d done everything right but couldn’t afford to go away.

Detroit wasn’t much of a college town. Buildings were still boarded up from the riots in the ‘60s, old flaking murals on their sides—fur storage, haberdasheries. It was hard to imagine the extinct race of people who had needed these places. The ones I saw stood at bus stops and seemed to live on party-store cheeseburgers.

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Pamuk's Latest Chapter

Newsflash: The pumpkin we picked up at the market a couple of weeks ago is on its way out. Our urge to smash it is strong. Routinely we imagine dropping it from an urban peak and watching it plummet until it strikes the pavement and then a tidal burst of sloppy orange flesh stops the city in its tracks. Elsewhere, this thing called writing is really catching on. Just look at all these authors: Orhan Pamuk releases a new novel, which is good news for readers and bad news for pumpkins. Jonathan Lethem didn’t describe New York as a tasty pumpkin pie. But he should have. New Delhi once loved its pumpkins. Then Noir showed up and killed them dead. Read more in Rain Taxi. Abe Books gets in the spirit and announces the best ghostwritten books of all time; add to that list The Great Pumpkin Divorce, which shall be our first bestseller. Tennessee Williams was a notorious pumpkin thief. Can a writing contest in his name restore his reputation? Some say CA Conrad looks like a pumpkin. His words, though, are sharper than your grandma’s carving knife. Lastly, John Galsworthy should have had more staying power than James Joyce, at least in the minds of early 20th century readers. That’s interesting, especially since Joyce is the grandest pumpkin crusher the world has ever seen. — Kevin Murphy

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