Sam Sacks

@ssacks.bsky.social

2594 Followers 561 Following

Fiction critic at the Wall Street Journal (https://www.wsj.com/news/author/sam-sacks); editor at Open Letters Review, formerly Open Letters Monthly (https://openlettersreview.com/) sam_sacks [at] hotmail

Tired kids slumped together in the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica
A statue of a Roman soldier viewed from the rear, framed by marble pillars and placed before a long pool with more ruins in the background. This is the Canopus in Hadrian's Villa.
Chandeliers hang over the wood flooring in the long Hall of Mirrors in Versailles, where a little boy in overalls is happily running
A tubular metal heat shaft against a brick wall, with a mourning dove nesting between them
A park bench plaque with a message in code
Panel of a family on a boat looking at the Statue of Liberty. The caption reads "Coming to America, June 10, 1949 we arrived in New York. Max's cousin Clara came aboard the ship to greet us. As our daughter Brasia slept in her father's arms, Clara said to her, "My dear child, this will be your America!"
Two men holding an award plaque
A flowering Royal Paulownia tree growing out of a stone wall
Fuzzy picture of an American Woodcock amid a patch of not yet flowering daffodils
A flourishing ZZ plant in a gray pot on a blue window sill
black and white photo of a young Birgitta Trotzig looking pensive
Avon paperback of Muriel Spark's 'The Girls of Slender Means' with rounded corners. Images of cutout fashion figures on the cover.
A copy of John Carey's book 'The Violent Effigy' with an illustration of Charles Dickens on the cover
Hardcover copy of Anatole Broyard's 'Aroused by Books'
Rap artist Grand Puba leans against a Lamborghini with open doors for the cover of his album '2000'
1940 diary written on baking parchment paper
photo of obscure literary pamphlet to accompany humorously pretentious lit-bro post
wooden bookshelf with mass market paperbacks
photos of bookshelves filled with volumes of literary criticism
A colorful paperback copy of Nabokov's novel 'Pnin', with an illustration of an old man gazing at three university coeds.
Fort Boyard, an oval shaped stone fortress built in the water
An ashtray filled with tiny fried fish heads