Indholdsfortegnelse for Fall 2020 i The Paris Review

RABIH ALAMEDDINE In summer, our neighborhood quiets in phases. The quieting begins in May. Schools give their older kids, the seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds, a month off to prepare for the baccalaureate exams. Following a ritual as old as our parents, the students retreat to residences out of town, to peaceful chalets and cabins away from civilization for communal study and living. As noisily as migrating birds, they return for the state exams in June. Then school ends for the year; a couple of families travel abroad, a few more leave for the mountains. An outsider doesn’t perceive the slow but sure change in the neighborhood’s population until Beirut broils in August. In early July, our neighbors across the landing, the Masris, left for the mountains. They wouldn’t return from their…

When The Transit of Venus, Shirley Hazzard’s masterpiece, was published in 1980, the writer explained to the New York Times’ Michiko Kakutani that she “intermittently kept notes—a bit of dialogue overheard, a quotation from Goethe found at random, a description of a potential character” in small exercise books, and that her fictions began from such notes. Some of these jottings, such as Giacomo Leopardi’s “La sera del dì di festa,” gave title and mood to a finished work; some provided an image or a moment almost unnoticed in the larger drama: England late July 1972. Visit to Wilton. A little curly mound of a dog, like a chrysanthemum. A little chrysanthemum of a dog… Apartments in NY Building like cabins on great stationary ocean liners docked along the piers of…

WHEELCHAIR Weeks on my back, counting stars not up there, cutting quick close corners in the wheelchair Ralph kept moving true as oil, questions silent in my mouth after hearing a ragged sound rattle loose from other souls as if within my own body, trying not to drag my foot, & near misses in the hallway pumped dares through blood as we rolled into the elevator. I can see my great-grandma Sarah, as wheels of her chair furrowed those chopped rows, feet curled under her, a rake or a hoe held in strong hands, weeding corn, beans, & potatoes dug to feed her hungry family down in the Mississippi Delta, & today it is not hard to hear a moan rise out of black earth where this woman raised hot…

ENRIQUE VILA-MATAS The writing of Enrique Vila-Matas is marked by a dazzling array of quotation, plagiarism, frames, self-plagiarism, digressions and meta-digressions: an intense and witty textual delirium that has made him one of the most original and celebrated writers in the Spanish language. Born in Barcelona in 1948, he published his first novel—a single, sternly uninterrupted sentence—in 1973. Continuing his fidelity to the myth of the avant-garde writer, he then moved to Paris, living in a garret rented from Marguerite Duras, before returning to Barcelona, where he spent the next decade publishing novels, a story collection, and literary essays. It was with his sixth book, however, A Brief History of Portable Literature (1985, translation 2015), that Vila-Matas transformed into a true original. The book poses as a history of a…

TROY MICHIE Interdisciplinary painter and collage artist Troy Michie (b. 1985) was raised in El Paso, Texas, and his work reflects the complexities of growing up multiracial along the U.S.-Mexico border. Michie began his formal training as a figurative painter and quickly brought collage elements onto his canvases. A central motif of these compositions is the Black male body—nude portraits, excised from vintage erotic magazines, appear frequently, often with clothes drawn onto them. A recent series examines the cultural history of the zoot suit in the Southwest, while other new pieces focus on the mysteries of the erotic male form: “There has to be something that isn’t totally easy to figure out,” Michie says. While the politics of representation of marginalized communities are a persistent theme, present, too, are formal…

AT DAVID LIVINGSTONE’S STATUE for Harry Mphanza We have changed a great many of our colonial place names since independence, but we have kept the name of Livingstone out of a deep respect. —Siloka Mukuni, chief of the Leya People At the onset of my ingenious plan, the sun barely shonethrough the mist.I struggled with a name to identify the rushesof water pouring beside me. Half of my tongue saying Mosi-oa-Tunya—“the smoke that thunders.” The other saying Victoria Falls. And here is my complex. To shred the paletteof English lodged on my tongue. Its sheer civility.Restraining all languages, I snuck past two olive-sheenedsecurity guards sleeping underneath the shadeof banana leaves to find Livingstone’s bronze body, to which I snickered: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”My hand ran across the chiseled letters inscribedbelow…

AYŞEGÜL SAVAŞ Lara was supposed to have breakfast with Selin, a friend from middle school who had a long layover in Paris. It was eight thirty, and Lara was frustrated not to have the morning to herself before teaching in the afternoon. She loved the early, luxurious hours when she was free to do anything she wanted, which often meant making coffee and going back to bed to read. She hadn’t seen Selin in more than fifteen years, though they’d kept in touch a little over Facebook. Selin sometimes wrote out of the blue, having remembered an episode from their school years, or to ask how Lara was doing. Lara had moved to Boston for university, then to New York, before coming to France. Selin would write that she dreamed…

MY GIRLFRIEND KILLED JAMES BROWN Guy walks up to me in the park and says, “My girlfriend killedJames Brown,” and I start to say, “Do I know you?” butI don’t want to miss out on the story, so I say, “No lie!” and he says,“Yeah, I got bumped up to first class, and when I saw whomy seatmate was, I went back to economy and told my girlfriend,and even though she had the flu, we switch places, and three weeks later, James Brown is dead.” How’d you like that on your résumé?Or anyone’s death, though that didn’t bother the local womanwho got life recently for murdering her husband because, accordingto the trial transcript, she didn’t want to “suffer the shame ofa divorce.” Nothing good comes from murder. Well, if you…

RABIH AL AMEDDINE’s most recent novel is The Angel of History. His next, The Wrong End of the Telescope, will be published by Grove in fall 2021. MARGARE TATWOOD is a Canadian poet, novelist, and essayist. A new collection, Dearly, will be published by Ecco this fall. PATRICK BARRETT has had plays produced in New York City and Edinburgh. His fiction has appeared in The Last Magazine and Virginia Quarterly Review. ROHAN CHHETRI’s Slow Startle won the 2015 Emerging Poets Prize from the (Great) Indian Poetry Collective. His second book is forthcoming in 2021 from Tupelo Press. JOHN LEE CLARK is the author of Where I Stand, an essay collection about his experiences as a DeafBlind writer. His poems have appeared in The Nation and Poetry. WYN COOPER has published five…

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE I close in on facts fine as sugar poured from a bottle labeled salt, comprehend nothing. I hear a knock, then another, go to the door but no one’s there. I unlock it and leave it open. When the bottle’s empty a note pops out, its paper faded as the globe on my desk. It’s unreadable. I spin the globe to see where it stops. It rolls off the desk and hits the door, which closes so hard it opens again. I spin the globe more gently this time. It stops where a country used to be. I am tired. I am so tired of this.…

“WAIT TILL I TURNT HIS OFF. NOW.” “That noise. Whatever is it?” “The Hoover was running.” “How’s that?” “I said, I was running the vacuum.” “Not that. Outside. Listen.” Rosie leaned over the banister. “Oh, it’s the bee, dear.” “Bee nothing. A thousand woodpeckers working on tin.” “The working bee. You’ll see if you come down.” Mrs. Peale opened the front door. “Hammering nails into the elms. The whole town.” “For heaven’s sake.” “You make a circle of nails round the trunk of the tree. It’s supposed to stop the elm disease.” “I see.” “Didn’t you get the circular? And they came round, too, door to door. But then, you didn’t get up here last weekend.” “No, that’s right, we stayed in town.” “Nice when you can come up here…

SHANTEKA SIGERS Bea walks into the classroom wearing the clothes she had on the day before. The Teacher understands that this is going to be a bad day. Bea’s hair is uncombed, face unwashed. She arrives precisely twelve seconds late. Not so late that the Teacher has to make a big deal about it. But not on time. Bea walks like a prisoner forcibly escorted, snatching herself along, step by step, then pouring her thin body into the seat. She has no books, no pencil or paper. She drapes herself over the desk and waits for the Teacher to continue or challenge. The Teacher rides the L two stops from the school and into an entirely different country. Chicago pieces itself together that way. The platform at her station offers…

ELOGHOSA OSUNDE I’ve always had a problem with introductions. To me, they don’t matter. It’s either you know me or you don’t—you get? If you don’t, the done. Simple. Kick me out of the house at fifteen—a main thing you need to know is that I am a hustler through and through. I’m that guy that gets shit real useful muscles. Watch me learn how to play all the necessary games, good and ungood; watch my might. Watch me learn why a good knife (and not just any type of good, but the moral-less kind, -ing under a bridge. Just a week after that, watch me barged-in-on secret behind me, a heartbreak falling swear on my own destiny and insist to the God who made me that I’m bigger than…

YOUNG RELICS They broke into houses,my sisters. The empty ones,just built, where nobody had yettried to sleep. Little moundsof sawdust still in the corners,no floorboards loose.I imagine them being the wayI’ve seen them be with horses,hands gentle on the walls—after all,a house must learn to hold a familywith all its quivering systemsof energy and grief. I once saw Sierrawith a colt that wasn’t readyto be ridden. She stood in the stalland talked until his heart rate slowed.All through our neighborhoodnew houses were dark and panicking.Enter sisters.Bringing comfort where it wasn’tsupposed to be, no key for entry,no light allowed, just a ritual giftfor the rooms alone to remember:hands on their painted flanks.Voices in the eaves. CASSANDRA It’s time to leave again. She unplugs the fridgeand watches until the orange coils on…

ANTONELLA ANEDDA Antonella Anedda, born in 1955, is one of Italy’s most lauded contemporary poets. She writes with precision and delicacy, yet her work testifies to her vast engagement with human history and geography. Her six books of poems include her Residenze invernali (Winter residences, 1992), Il catalogo della gioia (The catalogue of joy, 2003), and her most recent work, Historiae (2018). Among her many books of prose are a study of details in works of art, La vita dei dettagli (The life of details, 2009), and Isolatria (2013), a survey of the history and geography of La Maddalena, her family’s native region of Sardinia. She has received numerous prizes for her poetry, among them the Premio Montale, the Premio Letterario Viareggio-Repaci, and the Premio Puškin. In 2019 she received…

THE MANSION I understand—the no one cares billboardlooms over the exit ramp; Nancy has lost her placein her novel for the umpteenth time; the Labhas dysplasia. Overhead, a speciesof blank Midwestern sky fallsopen like a journal you buy full of hope,then leave in some drawer where it remains, blank.The universe is bored with my questions,finally. I knew it would happenthough one is nevertheless taken by surprise.So many in real pain remain silent.Lonesome thing in the forest, stay there!Don’t come out! You no longer fascinate.I always begin by speakingfrom exactly where I am. But then, you know—the earth rotates, I am awash in liesand pretension, waving a tiny flag at the moon.If you make the song real it goes onsinging itself, someone said, and that aloneshould be enough. Not like the…

BARE BONES Imagine you at the beginning of thelongest walk of your life, no thought given toshoes, socks, toothpaste, hats, and the otherrip-rap, nothing of watches or water, sleepingon the ground or in hay,setting out for the east, for Padua,for Venice, no knowledge of the churches you’d pass or the paintingsor frescoes inside, say Giotto, no friends anywherealong the way, no phone numbers, not even a walletwith a card inside for identity, not even yourpassport as I recall, everything stashed atJeremy Gentile’s, he of the small motorcycle,of the stocks and bonds, he of the bad English cooking,and the walk to Bologna, then Florence, all before thelong sleep in the Boboli Gardens, this was myschooling, my graduate work,my fellowship from God,starting with a lake.…

Cover: c Troy Michie, courtesy of Company Gallery, photography by Daniel Terna. Page 34, the Shirley Hazzard Papers, 1946–2010, the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University in the City of New York, courtesy of the Shirley Hazzard Estate; page 62, courtesy of Galaxia Gutenberg; pages 67, 77, courtesy of Enrique Vila-Matas; page 72, c Carlos Garcia Delgado/Pickwick Films; page 83, c Hector Guerrero/AFP via Getty Images; page 88, c Jordi Esteva; page 95, c Olivier Roller (detail); pages 112–31, c Troy Michie, courtesy of Company Gallery, photography by Daniel Terna; pages 148–78, courtesy of Antonella Anedda Angioy. Enrique Vila-Matas, “The Art of Fiction No. 247,” was transcribed by Maru Pabon and translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes. Frank Wynne contributed the translation of Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp…

PAGES 5 – 8 an excerpt from The Ferguson Report: An Erasure City officials have frequently asserted that the harsh and disparate results of Ferguson’s law enforcement system do not indicate problems with police or court practices, but instead reflect a pervasive lack of “personal responsibility” among “certain segments” of the community. Our investigation has found that the practices about which area residents have complained are in fact unconstitutional and unduly harsh. But the City’s personal-responsibility refrain is telling: it reflects many of the same racial stereotypes found in the emails between police and court supervisors. This evidence of bias and stereotyping, together with evidence that Ferguson has long recognized but failed to correct the consistent racial disparities caused by its police and court practices, demonstrates that the discriminatory effects of Ferguson’s conduct are driven at…

MEZZA VOCE All summer the half voice lurked behind me & I played deaf for days for to live To not write about it to use my body Part the river’s flesh to operate Machinery is human too to love & for once stay awake through it all. Now it comes like the deer sleeved Out of the green in clean staccato All corpuscle & hunger—No, not the deer The ravens calling for the wolves to split Open the light from the dead deer’s belly Jeweled in the dark purse of its pelt. We are each given heaven for brief so heavy We put it down dance small around it. KING’S FEEDERY After the rape & the bloodbath, the savage king & his men retired to a long shed built…

THE WITCHING HOUR In life if I could say for sure what I have loved there would be no tunnel needed for any inner or earthly transport. Everywhere I turned there would appear only the blinding clubs of the sun and when I thought of escape I would thank a dead man for my thoughts and lick through his navel all my sweet unknowable time. He would be lanky and love and unlove me. I would not worry about our undoing, about survivals. I would get up from bed and be gone with the kit of the careless. In my confusion I would have a child. I already did. I did him a fatal injury bringing him here. They handed him out of my body onto my body. When he…

LINE OF DESCENT Susannah Harrison, “Songs in theNight; By a Young Woman, Under HeavyAfflictions,” didn’t touch him, but MorrisonHeady traveled by stage from Louisvilleto touch Laura Bridgman, whodemanded that Helen Keller wash her hands. Helenwould later touch many of us but wouldn’t let ustouch her back. But Laura alsotouched Angeline Fuller, whotouched Clarence J. Selby, whotouched the whole world, first in Chicagoand then in Buffalo. Whom shall wechoose for next in line? John PorterRiley. We don’t know whomhe may have touched. We know far moreabout his white classmate, but we hopethat he touched Geraldine Lawhorn, perhapsat an Ohio Home for the Aged and InfirmDeaf Easter Dinner. Jerrietouched too many to number. Robert J.Smithdas, who was an elitist bullyhiding behind poems so beautiful they openedcheckbooks. May he tremblein peace. Richard Kinney,…

THOMAS MCGUANE It was a Friday at the start of summer when Drew stopped at Ace to buy Sheetrock screws and spackling. He had to fix the bathroom wall where client Mike Khoury angrily fanning a wheel of color he’d lost his temper after a conversation with Lucy about her mother. In the same aisle, he spotted his built, with a windbreaker stretched over his chest, a Lakers ball cap atop his head. He was an eye surgeon. chips. “This bloody card lists twenty-seven whites!” he shouted at no one in particular. Mike was thickly “You can’t go wrong with Colonial or French Cream.” Drew knew these names because Lucy had just painted the bedroom in their rental, but he felt obsequious making the suggestion to a client. Mike gave…

WINTER VACATIONS How quickly we’re skimming through time,leaving behind usa trail of muffin crumbsand wet towels and hotel soapslike white stones in the forest.But something’s eroded them:we can’t trace them backto that meadow where we began so eagerlywith the berry-filled cups, and the parentswho had not yet abandoned usto take their chances in the ground. Our tropical clothing’s remorseless:it fully intends to outlast us.We’re shriveling inside it,leaking calcium from our bones.Then there’s our crafty hats:we catch them sneering in mirrors.We could afford new t-shirts,daring ones, with rude slogans,but it seems a waste:we’ve got too many already.Also they’d gang up on us,they’d creep around on the floor,they’d tangle our ankles,then we’d fall down the stairs. Despite all this we’re traveling fast,we’re traveling faster than light.It’s almost next year,it’s almost last year,it’s…

LYDIA DAVIS AN INCIDENT ON THE TRAIN I’m on the train, traveling alone, with two seats to myself. I have to use the restroom. Without thinking about it carefully, I ask a couple across the aisle if they would please watch my things for me for a moment. Then I take a closer look at them and have second thoughts: they are young, for one thing. Also, they seem very nervous, the guy’s eyes are bloodshot, and the girl has a lot of tattoos. Still, it’s done now. I get up and start moving back. But, as a precaution, I ask a man sitting a few seats back from mine, who is dressed in a suit and looks like a businessman, to please keep an eye on that young couple…

PATRICK BARRETT In the year of our Lord 687, in cause of an early, wet spring, the body of Saint Cuthbert was laid in the ground to rest. On the tomb were figured angels and seraphim of plain but wonderful design. And among these flitted cherubs, like apricots set into the stone. Thus carved, the tomb was set upon a patch of ground a low word’s reach from the road, where wild grass grew and flowering thyme. But as is often the case with men and women of such holy incorporation, this was not the end of what God had planned. For not two weeks after the body was laid to rest, a certain woman passed by on the road that went through that place. Now, this woman had long…