Abstract: Photo by Christian CastroA new patient is coming this morning, referred only by "word of mouth," she says on the phone when Dr. Stephen Margolis returns her call. But when Edith Adler walks in the door, at once he knows he's seen her before. An attractive, neatly groomed woman in her sixties, around his own age, in a taupe wool skirt, a white silk blouse that almost matches her long silver-white hair. In her walk, in the alertness in her eyes, she cultivates a youthful look—silk scarf in many colors, calf-high boots—as if she were in her twenties. She's trying to look not girlish but capable, clear-eyed. She reaches out her hand. He takes it."Haven't we met' Don't we know each other'" he says, narrowing his ... Read More PubDate: 2017-06-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Hot swarf hit me in the eye, the pain insane, furious, awe-inspiring. The pain was so intense it seemed to take on shape, flare red: shards of fire illuminating my cornea. Inhuman pain.I cried out, cringed, wilted. I fell to my knees, penitent. I made a variety of gibbering animal sounds. I moved my hand towards my eye, clutching at it without making contact—as if I could draw the pain out through force of will. It was my right eye, and it was tearing and welling and leaking: a stream of water down my cheek.I had let go of the jigsaw, and it was now winding down, caught in the sheet of metal, the teeth grinding to a halt. The factory floor was silent, empty, still. I had been working late, alone except for my ... Read More PubDate: 2017-06-16T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: This issue—particularly its fiction—is replete with instances of darkness and turmoil in personal lives, and I wonder if this might be because fiction so frequently holds a mirror to the world in which it is created: writers are already metabolizing the historical moment. I've been thinking a lot lately, too, of past turbulences. It might be useful now to look at the previous century, if only to try to avoid repeating some of the same mistakes. The 1900s opened with a set of presumptions that didn't work out. What many assumed was going to be a century of extended peace turned into an almost gothic time of warfare, economic disruption, and darkness: first an unexpected world war, followed a decade afterward by a ... Read More PubDate: 2017-04-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Emily Carr at St. Ives, December 1901, John Douglas photograph, courtesy of the Royal BC Museum and ArchivesThe painter Emily Carr's training at the California School of Design in San Francisco was interrupted during the 1892–93 depression when she was called home to help support her family. Back in Victoria, British Columbia, with four overly protective older sisters, Carr was stifled. She wanted to study art in Paris but lacked confidence in her talent. Worrying that her work was tame and fussy, she longed to encounter the "new art" of Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Cézanne, but the idea of going to Paris intimidated her. She was not ready to compete in Europe's artistic epicenter. Her family shared her ... Read More PubDate: 2017-04-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Photo by Garry HayesBa dies in the night, prompting them to seek two silver dollars.Sam's tapping an angry beat come morning, but Lucy, before they leave, feels a need to speak. Silence weighs hard on her, pushes till she gives way. Leaking apologies or Ha ha has."Sorry," she says now to Ba in his bed. The sheet that tucks him is the only clean stretch in this dim and crusty room, every surface sticky with tobacco spit. Ba didn't heed the mess while living, and in death his mean squint goes right past it. Past Lucy. Straight to Sam. Sam the favorite, round bundle of impatience tapping at the door in too-big boots. Sam clung to Ba's every word and now won't even meet the man's gaze. That's when it hits Lucy: Ba ... Read More PubDate: 2017-04-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Photo by Corporal Charles Overstreet, Charles Overstreet Collection, Flora Public LibraryThe door hinges creaked, and the thudding footfalls of his family shook the beams. What were they doing here today, the day before Thanksgiving? Voices, the crackling of grocery bags, firewood clunking in front of the hearth (because they thought he was too old now to carry it from the barn himself). They swarmed into every corner of the parlor and the kitchen with no thought to the most important question, the same this year as every year: Who had brought the goddamned cheddar? Indeed. Two years ago he'd put his foot down and said he would no longer provide! So this year would be the same as last year: crackers and hummus ... Read More PubDate: 2017-04-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Photo by Arash Afshar, Port of San DiegoIn the moments after the accident, Professor Chandra saw not his life flash before him but his ideology. First came his years at Hyderabad, his BA in Economics when he was a Marxist like everyone else; his PhD at Cambridge, when he realised India would have to liberalise if terminal underachievement were to be avoided; his first job at the LSE, where he became fond of saying that communism was simply the most arduous route to capitalism; his decade at Chicago, where Milton Friedman helped him change his tyre in the snow, and his return to Cambridge a full professor and a fully fledged neoliberal. And then the crash of 2008, the instant vilification of his tribe, the doubts ... Read More PubDate: 2017-04-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Thunderstorm photo by Thomas Bresson; photo of young woman by martinakThe photos arrived at all hours, nearly always catching Sandra by surprise. She might be sorting through her mother's things when the phone burbled with another text, or trying to weed the riotous mint from her myrtle beds, or dozing in defeat on the sunroom daybed, the afternoon having gotten away from her. Without her mother in the house it was often too quiet, but these were not interruptions she welcomed. Vrrrt, the intrusive little messenger would trill, and she'd know that another photo was waiting, or three, or ten, or even a bit of rocky video filmed as the sender weaved down cobbled lanes or stepped over clods in vineyard rows.Often ... Read More PubDate: 2017-04-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Isn't this your life?You think you might begin this story with an admission: you really don't know who you are, or who you were, or how you became the one after the other. Or others—it's not as if you've only been two versions of yourself. And what does it mean to have become? How is becoming accomplished? Maybe it's about time. From time to time, there are portals. You step through and become, or you don't. How much control over these things do you really have? You wonder if the self is a matter of becoming at all, or if it's just something that happens to you. How would you know the difference?But instead, you'll start with this, which is a fact: you can fix in time much of your father's history, and therefore ... Read More PubDate: 2017-04-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: I'm writing a collaborative novel in which dogs become hyperintelligent and reset the existing mammalian pecking order, good-naturedly overtaking and enslaving humans. I know dogs but haven't lived with one since I was young, so it seemed important to review the literature. I wanted the dog characters I created to be vivid and accurate in their dogginess. Because the dogs in my novel are filled with determination and pluck, bursting with ideas about how to reshape the world to suit them, I wanted to read books with similarly self-possessed canines at their center.What I found was that books with dogs as main characters are, in fact, not necessarily books about dogs but books about humans' relationship to dogs. ... Read More PubDate: 2017-04-30T00:00:00-05:00
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