My 200-word piece, “Kingdom of Reversal,” appears in the current issue of The Bohemyth.
It’s about the last deer my father shot before he died in 2012 after many years with cancer. It’s also a small attempt to hint at an enormity of things. What a family goes through during a loved one’s treatment, the motions of anger and solace that form grief. I took the picture of him, above, a few years before the last deer, on a cold morning in Michigan.
The June 2015 issue ofThe Bohemythbrings together texts and visual art by artists from around the world. And the journal’s archives showcase a fantastic mix of traditional and experimental work. I’m grateful to the editors for including my piece, especially toMichael Naghten Shanks.
Last week I finished reading Mercè Rodoreda’s novel La plaça del diamant and I’m pretty much over the moon about it. She’s quickly jumped up to my list of all-time favorite writers, up there with the likes of Tove Jansson. I may end up writing at length about Rodoreda later this year but that’s an iffy proposition, for various reasons, when I really enjoy an author’s work. For now I’m just in all kinds of crazy love with her work and letting it sink into what I’ve read, appreciating what she represents artistically and historically.
The novel was translated by David H. Rosenthal in 1981 and published by Graywolf under the title, “The Time of the Doves.” A new translation by Peter Bush called “In Diamond Square” was published in 2013 in the UK from Virago. I highly recommend Rodoreda’s selected stories, published by Open Letter in 2011, in superb translation by Martha Tennent. The stories got me hooked on Rodoreda. I held off reading the novel for weeks after I finished the stories. I was afraid the novel wouldn’t be as good. It was. I’m going to start it again this week.
Here’s a quote I liked from near the end of the novel, about the subject of time.
And I got a strong feeling of the passage of time. Not the time of clouds and sun and rain and the moving stars that adorn the night, not spring when its time comes or fall, not the time that makes leaves bud on branches and then tears them off or folds and unfolds and colors the flowers, but the time inside me, the time you can’t see but it molds us. The time that rolls on and on in people’s hearts and makes them roll along with it and gradually changes us inside and out and makes us what we’ll be on our dying day.
Bookstores sustain me–it’s an obvious statement to look at it, but perfectly true. When I first moved to Philly back in 2008 I didn’t feel comfortable until I learned where the bookstores were, first those in my neighborhood, and later on all the other ones around the city. (There are so many good ones and I’m devoted to so many I won’t name a whole bunch because it’ll turn into a silly game of favorites!) I even organized and led an independent bookstore crawl about five years ago. It was so much fun and I hope to do another one some day.
For me these are places where special things will always happen, where I’ll return over and over again, often to get away from things I think I need to avoid for a while, and of course I get to meet folks there and chat and learn about great books or just random things I’ve never heard of.
So being a bookstore sort of person it was inevitable that I’d eventually write at least one short story about them and try to get at what they mean to me, or a version of me. Recently, Jared Daniel Fagen, founder of Black Sun Lit, was kind enough to publish my flash fiction, “A Thousand Lives,” about bookstores, desire, and in a way, eternity. (A certain West Philly bookstore plays an anonymous role in it.)
Black Sun Lit has an impressive archive of online work to explore, and the first issue of their print journal, “Vestiges,” is forthcoming.
Thanks for taking a minute to check out the story. It’s fiction, but entirely true in many ways, too, of course.
I’m pleased to say that my short story, “Killing Off Ray Apada,” is now available online. It first appeared in print last year in the first issue of gorse, a literary journal based in Dublin.
The story is about friendship, college, art, and regret. Many thanks to gorse editor-in-chief Susan Tomaselli for publishing it online.
If you enjoy experimental writing and haven’t checked out gorse, it’s high time you did. They assemble incredible poems, stories, interviews, and essays for each issue. You can pre-order issue no. 3 now and copies of no. 2 are still available.
If you’re a fan of translated literature you probably know of Asymptote, a free online journal that brings the world’s literature to life (in English translation) four times a year with massive editions packed with fiction, poetry, drama, criticism, interviews, and original art. Our fundraising campaign needs your help!
We’ve published work from 93 countries and 65 languages. Our archives include original work by incredible writers, and many Nobel Prize-winners, such as Anne Carson, Can Xue, Laszlo Krasznahorkai, J.M. Coetzee, Lydia Davis, David Mitchell, and many many more. But we need your help! We’ve crossed the $22,000 mark but only have until MIDNIGHT TONIGHT to reach $25,000.
We’re giving away many exciting perks, from literary care packages to designer AsympTOTEs. But best of all, you get to support world literature with your tax deductible donation. Hurry—our campaign ends at MIDNIGHT! (If you’re wondering why I keep saying “our” — I’m Asymptote’s interviews editor!)
Also, our January issue drops tomorrow. The video above gives you a sneak peek, but here’s a summary:
Our 4th Anniversary issue stars our Danish Fiction feature, powerful writing from Afghanistan and Syria, Boyd Tonkin on Jenny Erpenbeck, Platonov translated by Robert Chandler, Wang Anyi translated by Howard Goldblatt, three-dimensional poetry from Iran, an interview with David Damrosch, and so! much! more!
Please share the link or better yet make any size donation you can. Thank you! (Our twitter handle is @asymptotejrnl btw!)
I’d like to say thanks for following the blog this year and reading a few of my posts. I’m looking forward to checking out more of everyone’s work in 2015.
As for the rest of this post, I’ve been incredibly fortunate this year. I got to work with dozens of people who challenged and supported me and, perhaps most importantly, contrary to the past five years or so, no one close to me died. (Raps knuckles to temple.)
To gear up for the work ahead I took a little time to record good things from 2014 in the hope of building on them. And that goes for everything from writing/art projects to more social activism. Here’s a recap in a link-heavy chunk of text. Thanks again for reading truce in 2014!
truce 