Marek Makowski | The Smart Set

Toilets, Papers, Cardboard Boxes of a Country’s Secrets

Marek Makowski — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 12:30:00 +0000

When the details of former president Trump’s first indictment scandalized the public last June, the most shocking revelations must have been the photos themselves. The 49-page indictment included six photos depicting cardboard boxes of classified material stored in unsecured locations at Mar-a-Lago: stacked on the stage of a ballroom and in storage rooms, tipped over […]

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Yu-Gi-Oh! and Us

Marek Makowski — Thu, 28 Jul 2022 11:30:00 +0000

The first time in my life I felt summoned to something — before writing, before love — I received an invitation to the Duelist Kingdom. It arrived in the mail: a VHS tape and letter from Maximillian Pegasus, CEO of Industrial Illusions. In the video the cartoon man appears in a red double-breasted suit, standing […]

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Asking What’s Real and What’s Not

Marek Makowski — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 15:48:24 +0000

When I discovered her work, I was searching for a different Madeleine Gross. The days of lockdown wearied me; I lay in bed, at night or during the afternoon or morning (time was unbroken and the same), swiping to find how others had changed. I sought one of my many now-anonymous former coworkers from a […]

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Who Are the Writers Now?

Marek Makowski — Thu, 15 Apr 2021 11:30:00 +0000

In 2017 I entered the PhD program at UW-Madison because they would pay me to read and secretly I could use most of that time to write. I felt I had wasted the previous year working at a restaurant to pay off loans — not reading, not writing. I had squandered my prose style, I […]

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Pancake’s Haunts

Marek Makowski — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 12:36:12 +0000

I first heard of Breece D’J Pancake in a small pizzeria an hour west of Chicago. I had not been tending the bar that summer night, but Rae was, and when I came in to pick up a pizza she said to the lone man at the counter, writing, he does writing, and she called to me from behind the bar, saying, Honey, honey, O, honey, you […]

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