Barton Cross, a Navy serviceman, was taken prisoner by the Japanese in 1942. Then his brothers tried to get him back.

Rushdie is a writer keen to take on big, messy matters—and few are bigger or messier these days than American life at home and abroad.

He is putting his whole hood/ over the hyssop, lowering his bone nose/ for the scent.

“Hugh Hefner, a Chicago man, keeps sending us copies of his magazine, Playboy.”

When you only listen to one story, you neglect so many others.

On the particular genius of F. Scott Fitzgerald