To hold infinity in the palm of your hand

Alice Gregory writes: Shteyngart says the first thing that happened when he bought an iPhone "was that New York fell away . . . It disappeared. Poof." That's the first thing I noticed too: the city disappeared, along with any will to experience. New York, so densely populated and supposedly sleepless, must be the most efficient place to hone observational powers. But those powers are now dulled in me. I find myself preferring the blogs of remote strangers to my own observations of present ones. Gone are the tacit alliances with fellow subway riders, the brief evolution of sympathy with...