Indholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2018 i The Paris Review

The driver and I got a late start. I usually decide on these excursions the night before, but it was late in the morning when I informed the friend who was coming to visit me for the weekend that I had to cancel, it was absolutely necessary for me to cancel. I had got it in my head that in her presence some calamity or another would arise and she would have to assist me in some way, rush me to a physician or something. She would be grateful she was there for me perhaps, but I would find it a terrific annoyance and embarrassment. I gave some other excuse for the disinvitation of course. Pipes. I think it was broken pipes. I should have written it down so I…

Morning walking is like a hospital room The getting up and feeling sorry for sleep Putting my fat body into a cab and going to the hospital The smell of soup and pus everywhere Not telling hardly anyone for fear they’d kill my child like I almost had Listening to my headphones, dreaming of surprise Little ego in the hospital, does it care where you’ve been We carry status, but it doesn’t care Still it pays for you to have an expensive room And the nurses and everyone, they treat you better A little extra cot, in the jail cell where they let you stay And maybe the doctor is more interested to save you If you flash some cash out your dressing gown And it’s winter, so you wash…

Elena Poniatowska is one of the few survivors of her generation of Mexican writers, which includes Carlos Fuentes, Jose Emilio Pacheco, and Carlos Monsivais. In Mexico, she is most often called “Elenita”—perhaps dismissively years ago, but now with all the affection and respect a diminutive can imply. Her name is a byword throughout the Spanishspeaking world, though English-language readers know her only from the small percentage of her work that has been translated. Her more than forty books encompass a great many genres (“though not science fiction,” she quips); she is best known for fiction and nonfiction based on interviews “collaged,” as she puts it, into a seamless whole with a skill that reminds one of Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin. Poniatowska’s focus is almost exclusively on the most marginalized of…

1 Island traffic slows to a haltas screeching gulls reluctantto lift heavenwardcongregate like mourners in saltcrustedkelp, as the repellentnews spreads to colder shores: Sir Derek is no more.Bandwidths, clogged by streamingtributes, carry the pitchof his voice, less so his lines, mooredas they are to a fisherman’s who strainsin the Atlantic then hearing, too, drops his rod, the reelunspooling like memory tillhis gaped mouth matchesthe same look in his wicker creel,that frozen shock, eyes marblea different catch. Pomme-Arac trees, sea grapes,and laurels sway, wrecked having lostone who heard their leaves’rustic dialect as law, graspedtheir bows as edicts from the firstgarden that sowed faith— and believe he did, astonishedat the bounty of light, like Adam,over Castries, Casen-Bas, Port of Spain, the solaceof drifting clouds, rains like hymnsthen edens of grass, ornate winds…

Charles Johnson’s historical slave narrative, Middle Passage, winner of the National Book Award for Fiction in 1990, defies genre. Framed in part as a nautical epic with echoes of Conrad and Melville, there is also a Swiftian current running through it, with variations on the Sinbad stories and Vedic myths. Such transgressions of form suffuse Johnson’s fiction. His four novels and three story collections incorporate fairy tale, parable, conversion narrative, picaresque, bildungsroman, and more. Johnson’s balance of playfulness and philosophical rigor also energizes his screenplays for television and film, two collections of humor writing, and several volumes of essays on Buddhism and craft , including Turning the Wheel (2007), Taming the Ox (2014), and The Way of the Writer (2016). In life, as in his writing, Johnson does not limit…

Drawing draws us in-volving us further and stretchingattention it sketches reachinginching in ink and graspinggraphite graphing drawingdraws us out of our cellsand selves extending thinkinginto seeing what wassensed or seen as somethingonce in hand an eyeor at the fingers’ tipsit leads one on to a placeof twos and too and intodepths and arcs as anglescurve through layered swervesand lines as tines drawingis first and quickest tothe quick and draw and yet itslows and flows unfoldingtime raveling mine ittries out signs alonga way a wavering it’sa doodle dancing withinits perfect incompletionnow a mesh and not amess a net that’s workingthrough a seam between usdrawing seems to honewhat might be true and turn by turn it trains but doesn’ttame. Like runes. It tunes us. There is a score to allthat isn’t said…

Somehow, they were swimming in the canals. Later this part seemed hazy, but somehow they were all there: Lila, her little boy, and James, a former student. Whether James had arrived with Lila and her son or was simply also there enjoying the day is unclear, but at some point it became clear that they were there together. It was a popular place to swim, so close to the city, with shops and cheap bars on the wharf above. Lila was conscious of having on her shabbiest swimsuit: flesh colored, a one piece. It had lost its elasticity yet was strangely smaller than when she had bought it. Her breasts were barely covered by the fabric, but this did not seem to her remotely sexy. She kept checking to make…

1 Lost causes confound. Where are you, cousin,since you swung upside down the iron gateoutside school? The earth is your sky—correctme, was. I blame the missionaries. I blamemyself for getting the words below Annie Vallotton’sfluent drawings. You drew blank. Swung and swung.The hinges, gnashing in my ears, wing outher “maximum expression with a minimumof lines.” Impossible, but wait awhile. 2 Me? Undermine the upper classes? Whatupper classes, exactly? Copper isn’t gold,nor is there a meadow or a brookin those crannies wedged on hillside plots—schemes, excuse me—cinder blocks and grillesartillery-teetered like upholstered derelictsamid fruit trees. They, too, are survivors.They live off the blood franchise I refuse,with undue respect, to forgive and move on. 3 Even the best possible outcome, you flewan avenging angel’s speed, was possible—forgive me, is. Ivory shade burns…

In the crucible of our family my sister burned like molten steel. Once I saw her arms outspread her legs hanging limp and useless wet saliva dripping from her tongue. I screamed they surrounded her lifted her onto the sheets where she convulsed for hours traces of stain and guilt shattering her face my sister my sister cunning participant spectator victim inside the ugly family circle. Her name was Josephine. No shortening to a rounder, softer sound like Josie or Jo was ever allowed her name was Josephine. Wide eyes alert for trouble a mouth that protruded too far lips too full for comfort. A skinny knock-kneed girl who stared so hard one day her eyes crossed locked and the full lips took on a slight tremor. Her room was…

TO YOU to youthe viewto methe monthsmemoryarmoire of glorysullen salon of saltyou up highannouncement annulledthe arc the archaiceverything’s weightstranglesstrange circlelove meit’s your playI sayno one saysnothing saysthe back of the curtainmakes love to the windI waituntil they finish uplivingwithout youat dawn without youI see myself nakedamong the drossthat we tosseach to her placeto cryto speakan absenceto each her own absenceI’ve chosenI’ve gone pureI drank to see him againat the bottom of your wineyour cry in vain MEMORY NEAR OBLIVION Memory near oblivion. Far deaththe voice grinds and vibrates and tremblesthe wind deniesthe wind liesthe vain windthe hand hidesthe holy handthe sent saintthe saint inseminatedby the wind that liesI lieI denyI lie downfrom gold and from grindthese demented hands are minemy holy handsinseminated by your shadowI collapseI touch myselfa flower’s gesturefrailcoldI…

I had been told that the interviewer was waiting for me outside in the hotel garden. The muffled oceanic roar of traffic rose steadily from the nearby road. She was sitting alone on a bench amid the raw planted beds and network of gravel paths, gazing down the hill toward the city where the snaking dark shape of the river wound through the old town, trapped by the intricate architecture clamped to its sides. The blackened spikes of the cathedral could be seen jutting above the rooftops. She had come directly from the train station on foot, she said, since in this city to go anywhere by car was effectively a diversion from one’s aims. The postwar road system had been built, apparently, without thought for the notion of traveling…

I expect the holy of holies must bento watch machinery making machinery, no? Begin with the others and do what they do,and later you can branch off into the fresh snow. Did you think the room smelt of nothaving been smoked in? Or that she had a face like the gate of a pool after closing? The wax sealbegan as a personal stamp of authenticity before it grew into a tool the administrators usedto represent you. Given the soul’s freehold meant setting up franchises across the different sites. Iwould like to swim in you, it’s true, and I would add that you should feel free to look me in the eyes when I doso.…

IN OUR PREVIOUS INSTALLMENT . . . Mr. Field, a concert pianist, splinters his wrist in a train crash and uses his compensation to buy a house he has seen only in photographs: a replica of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye on a stretch of coast outside Cape Town. He moves there with his wife, Mim, and within weeks, the house begins to have a disturbing effect on him. Its glass walls and openplan spaces estrange the couple, while its unusually narrow windows, which, like a peep show, hold their contents tantalizingly out of view, excite him. As time passes, his thoughts are drawn, repeatedly, to a brief encounter with the house’s previous inhabitant, Hannah Kallenbach, with whom he felt an unusual intimacy. Then, one night, without warning or explanation, Mim…

PETER COLE’s most recent book is Hymns & Zualms: New and Selected Poems and Translations. KATHLEEN COLLINS (1942–88) was a writer, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. Notes from a Black Woman’s Diary: Selected Works of Kathleen Collins is forthcoming in December. RACHEL CUSK’s novel Kudos will be published in June. MÓNICA DE LA TORRE is the author, most recently, of The Happy End/All Welcome. She teaches in the Literary Arts Program at Brown University. DANIELLE DUTTON’s most recent book is the novel Margaret the First. She is cofounder and editor of the feminist press Dorothy, a publishing project. PATRICIO FERRARI was born in Argentina and currently lives in New York. He has translated Fernando Pessoa, António Osório, and Laynie Browne. FORREST GANDER is a poet, translator, novelist, and playwright. His…

This would have been her favorite season in the Allegheny woods. The shadows of the trees were rickety, and the wind had sap in its scent. But last week, Ty had left; now one day decayed into the next. Their house was abandoned. Only their father, sitting in the dark. Lumi was building a tepee. She leaned branches against the trunk of a white ash, leaving a triangular opening through which she could crawl in and out. But every time she passed through, a few sticks fell off. While she was inside the tepee trying to stabilize it, a man’s voice said, “This wouldn’t do in any situation.” From between the weave of sticks, she saw a massive pair of hiking boots and gray corduroy hems. Once in a while,…

Heads up, false friends use familiarity as camouflage. In the source language deciduous might be confused with apathy, but nothing could be further away from desidia than the timed impermanence of leaves. Yes, even forests engage in a form of family planning. We took for granted the tree outside our window until it failed to bud. A ginkgo, they cut it down when the building across the street went up. Since our view is limited, we like to imagine the situation from the missing tree’s perspective. Given the recent turn of events, it might have resisted blooming. It was protesting its decorative use to boost property values. Or perhaps after millennia of honing its particulars, it refused “the magic of tree-lined streets.” Concrete blocks these social beings’ access to fungal…

Once things leave my files,” Etel Adnan wrote to me, “I never know where they are, and don’t think about them anymore, otherwise you lose your mind.” Her method is sound: now ninety-three, she has made hundreds of works over seven decades and shows no signs of slowing. She made the painting on the cover of this issue in January, especially for The Paris Review (the pencil marks are hers, too). So numerous are her paintings, drawings, films, tapestries, and murals that I imagine it must be impossible to see them all; so brisk and vital are they that I am always eager for more—and amazed by the beauty she discovers each time. Adnan was born in Beirut in 1925. Her mother was Greek, her father an Ottoman officer from…

Two kinds of imagination: the strong, the promiscuous. —Leopardi Calle Rombiasio Watching a boneless nymph’shalf-hearted resurrectionfrom a spout in the pavementover and over; catching a glimpseof the source of my exhaustion,as if my gaze all this time had lent muscular support to her effort . . .She wasn’t at all as mischievousas her sisters, who seeped upthrough the flagstones of the court,serving the blue basilica to usrepurposed as a teacup. Nor was she as splenetic asthe poltergeist in the moka pot,seething liquid from every fissure,then exploding on its ring of gas.If it seemed that water was fraughtwith divinities under pressure, maybe I was going mad myself,just a little, in this hall of mirrors.So much glass my eyes glazed over,and green waves laminating a shelf where recto sits, and verso appearsin…

The moist cheese on his blue-and-white porcelain, the Pinot. Our entire marriage, I had been accepting those gifts, not waiting for the meal. My husband came into the living room and sniffed behind my ear. He moved my pretty hair. He told me I smelled like a newborn. Not baby powder: it was something else about me. Did you ever find pineapples? he asked. For Sunday? No. You better go back. Otherwise it’s on the list with the playing cards. What? I’m kidding, he said. He handed me that sweaty cheese. I want to wait for dinner, I said. He left the wine on the arm of the sofa. I sat there, watching the kitchen fill with steam. And that’s how I coddled the wait. It was a misfit infant…

I dropped my new shoes in the stream, thinking perhapsThey would get there before me, like two drowned JewsTrundling along the seabed to Jerusalem. My immigrant parents lost patienceand thrashed me.The best thing that ever happened to me was on the boat.I’ve no idea what it was. Then Tilbury. Or Harwich. Or Southampton. I got eggshells crushed with lemon juice for the calcium and its betterabsorption.I got buttered bread with a little bitter chocolate grated over it.I got glabrous soured milk with cinnamon and sugar.I got kohlrabi and celeriac and other nonexistent vegetables,Like so many chimeras and hippogriffs. I got Kinderkaffee from malted barley, and Katarzynki from Mr. Continental,but only on Thursdays.I got vermilion worm medicine, with bitter lemonThat didn’t begin to take away the color or the taste.The four…

Mon, Mar 19 PETER COLE AND LAURA KASISCHKE Thu, Mar 22 YOKO TAWADA AND TATYANA TOLSTAYA Thu, Mar 29 AMINATTA FORNA AND ALAN HOLLINGHURST Mon, Apr 9 ELIZABETH STROUT AND JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN Thu, Apr 12 JEREMY IRONS READS T. S. ELIOT’S “FOUR QUARTETS” Thu, Apr 19 LESLIE JAMISON AND GREGORY PARDLO Mon, Apr 23 JULIAN BARNES AND LORRIE MOORE Thu, Apr 26 THE TENTH MUSE WITH EILEEN MYLES Mon, Apr 30 TRACY K. SMITH, JENNY XIE AND JAVIER ZAMORA Wed, May 2 ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI AND DUNYA MIKHAIL Thu, May 3 CURTIS SITTENFELD AND MEG WOLITZER Thu, May 17 STEPHEN GREENBLATT Wed, Jun 6 ROXANE GAY AND TAYARI JONES BOOKS & BAGELS Sun, Apr 8, 11 am KAREN KUKIL AND PETER K. STEINBERG on Sylvia Plath's Letters Sun, Apr 22,…