“What Happened to the Baby?”
When I was a child, I was often taken to meetings of my Uncle Simon’s society, the League for a Unified Humanity. These meetings, my mother admitted, were not… More
Ulf Stolterfoht: Lingos I-IX
(8) beautiful like: latent snap decayward —because abstract. horrible like the deathscreams of hedgehogs as they fade intothe night. that’s what the new poetryis like. there was a time when… More
Conversations in Tusculum
Tusculum, a town in the Alban Hills, fifteen miles southeast of Rome, is home to many country villas owned by wealthy and politically well-connected Romans. More
The Clean House
CHARACTERSLane: A doctor, a woman in her early fifties. She wears white.Matilde: Lane’s cleaning lady, a woman in her late twenties. She wears black. She is Brazilian. She has… More
The Septembers of Shiraz
CHAPTER 27Isaac stretches his legs, tapping them with his fingers to help his blood circulate. He is glad to have a sink in his room; he rinses his face… More
How She Penetrates
According to family lore, there was a great bonfire in which all of Jane’s possessions perished. Her journals, her clothes, her scrapbooks, her books, her typewriter, her school papers,… More
Rereading Saul Bellow
[2000] The Adventures of Augie March (1953) The transformation of the novelist who published Dangling Man in 1944 and The Victim in 1947 into the novelist who published The Adventures… More
Season of Ice
1In the beginning there was snow. Torrents of tiny flakes blew in off the lake, pricked my skin before they melted on my hands and face and tongue. I… More
Cut off the Ears of Winter
Cut Off the Ears of WinterCut off the ears of winterthey have overheard too much,where incinerators burn,where rubble-strewn streetsare covered in dust from the remodeling.Again, the doe-man in mauve… More