“Piranesi” Is a Dispatch from the Kingdom of Chronic Illness

Posted on by Jess Zimmerman

In the first pages of Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, the novel’s titular narrator is almost carried away by three converging tides. Plunged into a landscape of marble and bone, sea, sky and crashing waves, I felt equally immersed. By the time the tides receded, leaving behind a smooth object in Piranesi’s palm—the marble finger of a statue—I had the slight premonition that I, too, had been gifted something unique and unexpected.

My husband Marc and I contracted the coronavirus while traveling in early March. When Piranesi arrived mid-September, we still couldn’t walk a mile without chest pressure and fatigue. We began reading the book aloud to each other, skipping nights when our lungs ached or we were too short of breath to speak. Soon the novel became more than an escape—it was a world in which the emotional resonances of our new lives were embodied in a story we could recognize, something we could name. 

The novel became a world in which the emotional resonances of our new lives were embodied in a story we could recognize. 

The experience of a long, strange sickness that stretched well beyond the initial definitions of Covid-19 was not an easy thing to communicate: not to doctors, or even to family and friends. My husband and I often felt marooned from the rest of the active world with our intimate, bodily knowledge of this novel disease and its devastating effects. 

Piranesi is also alone, stranded in a mysterious House occupied only by himself, myriad statues and a character he calls “the Other.” As he looks out across a courtyard one morning, Piranesi sees the Other looking out a window opposite. “I waved to him,” Clarke writes, “He did not see me. I waved more extravagantly. I jumped up and down with great energy. But the Windows of the House are many and he did not see me.” 

Clarke is best known for her first novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, a fantastical history of 19th-century England involving two rival magicians, published in 2004. After its success, Clarke didn’t publish again for fifteen years, overcome by an undiagnosed chronic disease. In her pages, Piranesi’s meticulous record of his surroundings takes on the obsessive, keen attention of an invalid, those gifted observers whose illness, although debilitating, also affords a close-up view of objects, people and places the rest of us might miss. 

When a leaf floats in on one of the tides that routinely flood the House, for example, Piranesi makes careful note of its arrival: “It was a leaf, very beautiful, with two sides curving to a point at each end. Of course it is possible that it was part of a type of sea vegetation that I have never seen, but I am doubtful. The texture seemed wrong. Its surface repelled Water, like something meant to live in Air.” 

As my own illness stretched on, I found myself pressed up against physical limitations. The slightest exertion brought symptoms sailing back, forcing me to rest for weeks on end. Whenever I felt claustrophobic, desperate to escape my body’s condition, Clarke’s book was a reminder that sometimes slowing down can open up new worlds. Small things become large; ideas coalesce, statuesque; and creativity flourishes within walls.

The studied details recorded in Piranesi’s journal build into the novel’s central tension: the mystery of his circumstances, insinuated in the tug of a dark current underlying his interactions with the Other. Clarke keeps the conflict just below surface, expertly orchestrating the movements of her characters. When Piranesi discovers a clue, torn pages woven into the nests of herring gulls in one of the House’s many halls, he decides to return in “late summer—or, even better, early autumn,” so as not to disturb the birds—prolonging a reveal and building suspense until the story has crested beyond containment.

Though occupying the same halls, Piranesi and the Other live in two different realities. Piranesi is ensconced in a landscape of cold, sweeping seas; deep, menacing pools and bitter winters. The Other arrives to their weekly meetings immaculately dressed in various suits, and appears to have access to an endless supply of ham sandwiches. I began to feel uneasy about their exchanges, fearing Piranesi’s trust in his only friend was misplaced. 

Something in the dynamic between the two characters was familiar. During the first months of the pandemic, we’d monitored oxygen levels from home, conserving hospital beds for those who needed them most. But as symptoms persisted into summer, I began to see specialists about our ongoing ailments—from a pulmonologist to cardiologists to an infectious disease doctor. Finally, I thought, we were going to get help. 

As is the case for many patients experiencing post-viral syndrome after a Covid-19 infection, my lab tests showed nothing abnormal. Because they were not objectively measurable, the pain and fatigue that consumed my world were not recognized in the realm of medical science. The infectious disease specialist told me I was just anxious. The cardiologist, that I was just dehydrated. The pulmonologist, that I was just fine. My tears on their exam tables were met with cold recommendations to see a psychiatrist. The Other holds a similar power over Piranesi, and uses his superiority to convince him that he is mad.

The House itself holds sway over its inhabitants, casting a spell of amnesia that returns its residents to a more primal state. Piranesi fixates on food, detailing methods for securing sustenance. “It is important to keep the body well nourished,” he reminds himself, collecting seaweed for fuel and making careful calculations of the tides to ensure he has shelter. 

In the absence of medical guidance, I began trying alternative methods to help us heal. I obsessed over nutrition, blending anti-inflammatory smoothies until our mouths were full of citrus-induced canker sores. I found myself thinking with affection about my apartment, which became a womb I rarely ventured from into the harsh world outside. Like Piranesi’s, our lives became shaped around survival.

Like Piranesi’s, our lives became shaped around survival.

Each of Piranesi’s diary entries is subtitled with his mode of time-keeping: “Tenth Day of the Seventh Month in the Year I discovered the Coral Halls,” he writes, or, “Ninth Day of the Fourth Month in the Year I named the Constellations”—epithets that strain to capture illusory hours. As our illness extended into autumn, calendar and clock were no longer sufficient gauges. Our time sense had warped with the year’s unexpected turns. Symptoms of a fourteen-day disease lingering for months. Seven hours in the ER stretching longer than a week of repetitious days. The breathlessness of a thirty-minute run after a five-minute walk. By winter, I was borrowing one of Piranesi’s appellations for 2020: “The Year of Weeping and Wailing.” 

It was a year filled with apocalyptic scenes: bodies piled in the makeshift morgue of an ice rink, bones of the first dead barely buried before joined by the latest victims of the virus. Often I’d look down the long hallway of my pain and it would seem interminable. At times it felt like the world was coming to a close, or that it must end soon, flooded by tides of grief sweeping in, unceasing. 

Like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Clarke’s second book is haunting—Piranesi visits the remains of others, scattered throughout the halls, caring for the bones of his unnamed dead. Yet the innocent nature of Piranesi’s voice keeps the reading experience light, as he describes objects precious to him within an ominous world. His observations are both grounded in his moment and weighted with metaphors that escape the walls of his labyrinth to echo in the rooms where it is read. “In all these places I have stood in Doorways and looked ahead,” he tells us. “I have never seen any indication that the World was coming to an End, but only the regular progression of Halls and Passageways into the Far Distance.” 

In many ways, a book is like a house, filled with undiscovered chambers, hidden hallways into vicarious experience. Familiar rooms you can return to, rooms with windows looking out onto new landscapes. These rooms, these pages, are a gift, washed up from the shores of another person’s world, reaching us in our own houses of pain and bewilderment, speaking, like Piranesi’s leaf, of other times and places, some lived through, some yet to come.

I often imagined the author writing from her sick couch the book I was reading from mine.

I don’t know how much Clarke’s long illness consciously informed Piranesi. I often imagined the author writing from her sick couch the book I was reading from mine. Through her words, I glimpsed a land I’d only begun to inhabit. I got the sense that I was visiting her halls—sometimes, even, that she was marking the way. “My life has been spent largely housebound for many years…Yet I don’t think I realized, straightaway, all these resonances,” Clarke told The New Yorker in a recent profile. “As soon as I started working on it seriously, then I could see them.” 

The experience of being ill is notoriously difficult to describe. Susan Sontag calls it “the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship,” in Illness as Metaphor. And though that text warns against overlaying damaging metaphors such as war onto the sick, Sontag herself resorts to the figure of speech to describe the experience—dividing humanity between the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick. In On Being Ill Virginia Woolf uses a similar metaphor, alluding to those “undiscovered countries that are then disclosed” to the invalid. But how to describe this new world to those back home?

Perhaps the extended metaphor of story gave Clarke room to play with the elusive experience of illness; maybe in fantasy she found the flexibility to move with pain’s shifting wavelengths. Sometimes illness is the blinding white brilliance of marble, the shaved edge of it, razor sharp. Other times it’s the fog of a mind’s torn pages, mucked with bird shit and woven into twigs. It’s the maze learned only by treading its paths, memorizing halls with an intensity only the desire to survive can produce, until they are a part of you—so much so that you wonder if, given the chance, you’d have the strength to leave them. Other times you are running down a corridor, energy returned, intent on escape, only to hit the hard, sheer surface of a wall. The floor gives way and you fall into the dark, still waters below to float in the cold silence of your pain. 

When Piranesi’s hunger sends him searching for food in a “Derelict Hall” filled with an obscuring cloud, he drops through a gap in the floor and is sent plummeting towards one of the “Drowned Halls” below, caught at the last moment by a statue’s outstretched arms. If you consider that the House’s sculptures are meant to represent metaphor itself—aesthetic representations of knowledge, ideas embodied from another world, meta-metaphors—then it’s not hard to see Clarke’s book in Piranesi’s rescue. As a reader, I felt caught up in the shared experience of the sick. As a writer, I gained the hope of one day communicating something to those back in the kingdom of the well.

I don’t know if the reader who is in good health will read illness in Clarke’s pages. No doubt for them the book holds its own found treasures. Many readers, for example, have likened the experience of quarantine to Piranesi’s labyrinth. And perhaps quarantine isn’t a bad metaphor for a protracted illness: its box-like limits, the endless days. 

As a writer, I gained the hope of one day communicating something to those back in the kingdom of the well.

Even if they don’t see the invalid experience in this book, I imagine most readers can glean something from Clarke’s character 16—named for being the sixteenth person in Piranesi’s world—who arrives from somewhere beyond the House near the end of the book. Sixteen seems to embody the kind of care longed for by the chronically ill. At first, Piranesi mistrusts 16, but 16 is persistent. Ignoring his disheveled appearance, 16 sits with Piranesi, listens to him, touches him, and lets him cry for a long time. Sixteen accepts who he is without forgetting who he was. Sixteen says: “I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”

Sixteen also lets Piranesi show off his world, such as his favorite “Coral Halls,” where sea life has bloomed over marble, “changing the Statues in strange and unexpected ways.” He points out the sculpture of “a Woman crowned with coral, her Hands transformed into stars or flowers,” and “Figures horned with coral, or crucified on coral branches, or stuck through with coral arrows.” The statue of one man has been so ravaged that “half of him appears to be engulfed in red- and rose-coloured flames, while the other half is not.” 

Sixteen admires the beauty Piranesi has discovered—the splendor of a world others have feared, reviled or disbelieved. Sharing these hidden wonders fulfills a deep longing in Piranesi. When, at the end of the book, he likens 16 to a statue, it is to that of an androgynous figure, holding a lantern aloft—leading, if not out of illness, then at least from the halls of its loneliness. 

The metaphor shifts: I glimpse Clarke in her character, showing the reader her domain, reminding me of the riches that can be revealed to those who inhabit this new land. For months I’d been paralyzed by the trauma of losing my health, spending what little energy I had searching for a way back to a former self. Without negating the horror of what had happened, reading Piranesi gently turned me back from that locked door, inviting me to venture beyond its threshold. “Show me the labyrinth,” 16 says to Piranesi, and he does.

How Do You Care for a Mother Who Has Never Wanted You?

Posted on by Jo Lou

“I would be lying if I say my mother’s misery has never given me pleasure.”

In Avni Doshi’s debut novel, Burnt Sugar, a woman named Antara calls a life coach for help in dealing with her mother’s Alzheimer’s disease. “Reality is something that is co-authored,” the woman tells Antara over the phone, after warning her that her mother’s dementia could shred Antara’s own grasp on reality. These words comfort Antara, but only as an affirmation of what she already knows: memory is unreliable, an easily altered thing. 

As Antara struggles with supporting her declining mother, she reveals their complicated relationship—an alternating dance of dependence and loathing that stems from a chaotic childhood following her rebellious mother after she fled her husband for an ashram in Pune. Everyone in Antara’s orbit seems to have their own version of the events of her childhood, creating a knotty web of threads that Antara is trying desperately to unpick.  

Doshi’s vivid, propulsive prose and original riff on the links between mothers and daughters, art and science, and influence and agency has earned her a 2020 Booker Prize nomination. I had the pleasure of connecting with Doshi from her home in Dubai, where she currently lives with her husband and two children. 

Carrie Mullins: Your novel made me very aware of my own brain in a way that was simultaneously fascinating and disarming. Many of the things that Antara does to understand and improve her mother’s dementia were new to me, and it made me think about how we tend to take our brains for granted when in fact they need upkeep like the rest of our bodies. Were you versed in the science of the brain before writing the novel or did you research it specifically? 

Avni Doshi: My grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s four years ago, and I knew nothing about the disease. I was already writing the novel, and memory was a central theme in the story, but as I began to research Alzheimer’s and try to make sense of it, I realized that I was relying on narrative to think around chemical formulas and medical protocols. Slowly the research began to make its way into the book, and the narrator, like me, had to use her art to understand what was happening to her mother. 

CM: Of course we can’t talk about the brain without considering the mind half of the mind/body equation. Throughout the book Antara’s mind becomes a kind of adversary that she can’t trust to tell her the truth. Her art project–where she draws the same image from memory to chart the inconsistencies over time–struck me as the perfect way to illustrate how subtly our mind deceives us about its own biases. What drew you to the themes of memory and the unreliable brain?

AD: I’ve been thinking about memory for years. I worked in the art world for a while, and since reading A Hundred Years of Solitude in my 20s, memory and the archival impulse have all inspired my curatorial practice and my art writing. I even did an exhibition where the curatorial note that I presented to artists was from Marquez’s novel. The artist Louise Bourgeois has also been inspirational to me, her work relies deeply on the way memories are transformed, the way they terrorize, their possibility for symbolic value. 

CM: The ashram where Tara flees with the young Antara is very creepy. It reminded me of the cultish groups in The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwan or The Girls by Emma Cline in that there can be a strange seductiveness, almost sensuality, to cults, and women in particular seem vulnerable to getting caught. 

Tara never should have become a mother. But she lives a life that is assigned to her, marries a certain type of man, enters a loveless marriage, and then decides to leave.

AD: Ashrams have always been in the corner of my vision, for as long as I can remember. When I was young, my mum’s cousin left her life in Pune behind and moved to an ashram in the Himalayan mountains. She was young, about 18, studying to be a doctor. She had no interest in spirituality or ashrams. In fact, her mother belonged to the Osho ashram in Pune, and she thought it was ridiculous, and refused to be a part of it. It never made sense to me why she left. What had pulled her there? I think I was writing into that question with this book.

In Burnt Sugar, it seems clear to me that Tara never should have become a mother. But she lives a life that is assigned to her, marries a certain type of man, enters a loveless marriage, and then decides to leave. What is compelling about the ashram for a woman like Tara? We all have holes, but what particular holes might she be trying to fill?

CM: Burnt Sugar is a tale of mothers and daughters and how fraught that elemental relationship can be, so I was interested to hear that you became a mother yourself after submitting the final manuscript to your editor. I have two small children and I’ve been shocked by how much motherhood changed my perception of certain texts (mostly I have a lot more sympathy for the mother characters!) — did it change how you viewed your depiction of motherhood?

AD: I think I understand the depth of ambivalence you can feel as a mother much more clearly. In fact, I don’t think I’ve known an ambivalence as complex as the maternal one. In a sense, my sympathy for both Antara and Tara has increased: I have a deeper understanding for the kinds of experiences they are having. But in another way, I’m more uneasy about their decisions at time. I have a different sense of what’s at stake. They’re both walking along a cliff—I suppose now I know what they see when they look down. It’s a long way to fall.

CM: From the corner tobacco seller to the Club, Pune comes across so vibrantly in the novel, it almost feels like its own character. Can you tell me a little about your connection to the city? 

I don’t think I’ve known an ambivalence as complex as the maternal one.

AD: My mother grew up in Pune and I spent a lot of time there as a child. It’s a second-tier city, not as big and overwhelming as Mumbai or Delhi, but because of the Osho ashram, I think there has always been a lot of interest in Pune. For me, it was a nurturing place because of my family but also a little terrifying. My mother and I would stay there for a month or two every winter, away from my father, who I just adored and couldn’t bear to be away from. So my memories of Pune are tinged with an anxiety, a feeling of powerlessness, which was useful to think about as I was writing. I didn’t want to describe Pune as it is, it was more about mapping a feeling, the Pune of my memories, which is layered with sensory experiences. Especially smell. Memory and smell constantly inform each other in the novel.

CM: I love hearing about an author’s writing process and from what I understand, you wrote the book over the course of many years while living in different places. What is your writing process like? Does it change depending on where you’re living or as time has passed?

AD: I’ve really experimented with this over the years. I’ve tried planning, plotting, I’ve tried going sentence by sentence. I’ve created complex rituals, which have included crystals and candles and sage, and other embarrassing things. I’ve pared everything down, I’ve written by hand. I’ve changed pens. Scrivener seemed interesting for a while but I got over that rather quickly. I’ve tried running and walking because Murakami and Joyce Carol Oates have said I should. Waking up at four in the morning was useful for a time, particularly when I was interested in getting down a certain word count. I’ve realized all of this can work for a while and stop working too.

I try not to be too attached now. I have two little kids and the time for writing is in between the moments I spend with them. But there is something about the time I spend with my kids that grounds me in the present and I think that seems to lead to interesting thoughts and ideas. I use a technique called sense writing that was developed by Madelyn Kent—where basically you enter this parasympathetic state in your nervous system to write. It takes the exertion away somehow, and puts the focus on process rather than product. 

The Life Destroying Magic of Parking Lot Sex

Posted on by Alyssa Songsiridej

“Akira Hirata” by  Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi

On a playscape outside the Oyster Ridge Public Library, a woman in a dinosaur t-shirt approached Akira Hirata about recording his three-year-old daughter’s voice.

Although the woman was slight and boyish, Akira noticed a respectable snugness where the dinosaur’s face stretched over her breasts. Akira’s fingers moved unconsciously to fix his hair. The woman handed over a foil-printed business card that read, “Faye Imamura: Voice Talent, Multi-instrumentalist, Children’s Media Consultant.” 

“Her voice has a newness to it,” Faye said. “A sort of warm ectoplasmic egg-yolky yum yum to it.”

“A yum?” Akira said. “I’m not sure I understand. You’re a researcher?”

“I’m an actress on television program called Mo Bananafish and Chums. I work out new characters using voices I think are unique.”  

“We know that show,” Akira said, gesturing to his daughter. “Banana chum-churum, Allie.” 

Allie’s wide-cheeked face looked up with a blank expression. 

“Hey Seymour! Keep it down! I’m trying to count my sheeps!” Faye said loudly. She was demonstrating a voice that was part whining parakeet, a little British, a little donkey squall. 

“Holy nuts!” Akira yelped. “That’s that clam on the show!”

“Scallop actually,” Faye said. “That’s me.” 

“Cool,” Akira said. “You think Allie’s voice is unique? She sounds like every kid here to me.” 

“Oh nope nope no dad,” Faye said. “I’ve got maybe ten thousand voices in my archive. Her voice is a five-leaf clover.”

“C’mon. No way.” 

“Oh yes. Very fresh and bright. Very thickwood whistlepig. Very Egyptian gerbil. Very pygmy rabbit-esque.” 

“Is your character going to be a gerbil then?” 

“No. It’s an octopus who falls in love with a bagpipe.” 

“Oh.” 

They exchanged details. Faye’s offer was four hundred dollars if Akira would bring his daughter to a local studio for some recording sessions.  

 “So this is a real thing actors do,” Akira said. “Study the voices of children.” 

“That’s right,” Faye said. “You know, like a painter’s basement is chock-full of palettes.”

“Or like when a serial killer saves a little toe from every body he’s hacked up.”  

“Yup, exactly like that,” Faye said. 

“I don’t want this to come off rudely,” Akira said. “But how much does a cartoon voice person make in a year?”  

“About 300k after taxes.”  

“Jesus Christ supernova. I wasn’t expecting that.”

“What did you expect?” 

“I don’t know. 30k?”

“It just depends on the popularity of the program. I’m lucky. I’ll see you two on Friday then.”

Faye did a little fist bump with Allie, blew it up, and then did a little robot-in-distress dance. 

“See you later, Terminator!” Faye said, her voice returning to the squalling donkey-Brit.  

By Saturday night, Akira and Faye were having an affair. Around nine o’clock, Akira told his wife, Mariko, he was going to Starbucks to finish some homework. Akira had been plugging away at an online Brand Strategy and Positioning certificate. 

“Make us proud daddy,” Mariko said, patting him on the shoulder. “Go get it.” 

And then Akira drove to meet Faye in an Olive Garden parking lot just six blocks from his home. 

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” Akira said, a second before peeling off Faye’s t-shirt and taking one of her barbell-pierced nipples into his mouth. It was like someone was clumsily feeding him a ripe summer berry, a metal utensil clanging along his front teeth. 

Faye’s skin was warm and succulent. The entire van was bathed in the smells of her shampoo and perfume. Akira was in a blackened forest of orange honeysuckle trumpets. Faye’s shining hair fell in choppy layers over his naked skin.   

“Don’t sweat it,” Faye said. “I’ve done this lots of times. It gets better and better.” 

The affair lasted six weeks. Akira and Faye always met in the Olive Garden parking lot and stripped down in the back of Faye’s Chrysler Town & Country. It was a surprisingly good van to have sex in. 

On one occasion Faye and Akira met in an Applebee’s parking lot. But Faye felt like the energy was off, and so they carpooled over to Olive Garden. Akira was happy he did not have to spring for hotel rooms. 

Akira knew making love with Faye was textbook betrayal, but a current ran through him that made him feel beyond reproach. After all, Faye had pursued him pretty aggressively. Akira believed there was a big difference between the betrayals you pursued and betrayals that fell into your lap. He was reminded of his first sexual experiences in high school, when Oyster Ridge High’s valedictorian, Samantha Hershlag, had given him a summer of blowjobs in the basement of her family’s beach house. 

Had it been wrong? Samantha had been all over him that summer. True, Samantha was his swim coach’s daughter. A swim coach who had once declared, “Anyone tries something with my daughter I’ll kick your little dick off its hinges.” 

On the other hand, Coach Hershlag was a laughing stock until Akira came along and vanquished every backstroke and breaststroke record in the county. 

On the third hand, Samantha had been dating Channing Shriver, who had also been Akira’s childhood friend. But on a fourth hand, Channing ended up stealing Akira’s bike and trading it for a Ziploc sack of marijuana. Didn’t one or more of these details mitigate the bad behavior?  

Akira had found himself stretched half-naked on a borrowed beach towel, Samantha’s warm lips sliding up and down his cock ten thousand times. Akira knew the scene would’ve horrified everyone’s parents. 

But Akira was struck by a sense of impunity. He had been fifteen-years-old and a C- student. Samantha Hershlag had been seventeen and the smartest person in school. She was going to Yale to study Philosophy and Political Science. Didn’t Samantha have a superior understanding of what was acceptable? Of what was customary high school mischief? It felt like the most qualified mind was in command of the situation. The commander wanted a cock in the mouth. Akira had decided the blowjobs were beyond his control. They were somehow key in developing the attitude of this future professor or senator. 

Was Akira being disloyal to Allie and Mariko? Sure. Had he told his beautiful and trusting family lies? Sure. Did he feel guilty? Sure. But at his core, did he own a mean, awful, disgusting soul? 

Was Faye an awful person? She didn’t look awful. She didn’t smell awful. Akira had watched Faye give leftover pancakes to a homeless person. And after all, wasn’t Faye’s job to strike joy into the hearts of thousands of children every single day? Wasn’t Akira also a part of that work in some small way? 

Akira and Faye made love exactly nineteen times. On the night of the nineteenth orgasm, Faye said she would be traveling internationally over the next month.  

“Let’s take a little break,” she said. “I’ll call you when I get back into town.”

That same night, Akira presented Faye with a gift. It was a lightweight cashmere scarf of darkened cobalt. 

“It was my grandmother’s,” Akira said. He stroked Faye’s neck. “She was an acclaimed singer. It’ll keep your instrument healthy.”  

In the first weeks that Faye was gone, Akira began to lay the groundwork for his escape. Akira told Mariko he felt underappreciated in their marriage. 

Hadn’t Akira started an Italian herb garden? Hadn’t he replaced their toothbrush mug with a Yamazaki alabaster toothbrush tower? Hadn’t he replaced the hanging toilet bowl cleaners with French vanilla candles? Other stuff too of course, but he felt like three was the correct number of examples to provide in the moment. Mariko didn’t acknowledge the efforts he made to keep their lives full of joy and vigor. 

Mariko never made efforts to be desirable anymore. After Allie was born, she never wore sexy underwear again. Outside of her working hours, Mariko slipped into more Adidas tracksuits than a Russian gangster.   

Was Akira wearing an Adidas tracksuit when he pointed this out? Yes he was. 

But Akira only wore Adidas tracksuits in retaliation for Mariko’s utter tracksuit resignation. Akira’s tracksuits were symbolic and defiant. This is why his were the ugliest color available. Crossing-guard orange.  

Akira suggested a Napa Valley getaway and couple’s counseling. He felt like all this would cushion the plummeting anvil of separation and divorce. Wasn’t it the natural progression? Disgruntled husband plus unflattering Adidas tracksuits plus marriage counseling plus impassive Napa Valley getaway equals inevitable anvil of divorce? 

Two months passed and Faye did not call. Communication via text had been curt and infrequent. Akira had Faye’s work email. But he did not have Faye’s personal email or home address. 

Akira began to worry. He had given notice at his job. Faye’s current salary was more than enough for both of them. And he felt he could improve her branding. Perhaps he could be Faye’s agent? Akira did not plan to be competitive about custody over Allie. If Akira was free during the workweek, perhaps he could go back to giving music lessons. His grandmother had always praised his singing voice. The grandson of the famous singer, Yuki Hirata, would turn heads. Could he even have the right stuff to become a voice actor himself? He thought about slipping the idea in passing to Faye.  

Then Akira ran into Faye at a Whole Foods smoothie bar. She was ordering a mango smoothie and wearing two scarves. One was Akira’s grandmother’s. 

“Faye,” he gasped. He gripped her arm from behind. 

“Oh hey!” Faye chimed. “Yowza! Olive Garden! I was just thinking about you. I see your face anytime I smell breadsticks.” 

“What in the fuck? I was sick worrying about you. You haven’t texted me in weeks.” 

“Yes yup yup sorry about that,” Faye said. “I’ve only been back in town for a couple of days. And then I’m leaving for Dubai on Thursday. I wanted to connect, but you know.” 

“But if you’re only doing voices,” Akira said, “does whomever really need you on location? The director?” 

“What?” Faye said. “Oh no. This isn’t a work thing. I’m going on vacation.”

“Oh.” 

“Listen,” Faye said, kissing Akira on the cheek, “I’ll call you soon as I’m back in town.”

The next time Akira saw Faye was six months later. She was giving a talk in the Film Studies department of Oyster Community College. It was a shockingly large and spirited event. Akira guessed two hundred people were in attendance. 

Akira considered confronting Faye during the Q&A. Did she know how much anxiety and embarrassment she had caused his family? Did her fans know she was a sexual predator? But once the microphone was in his hand, Akira just asked an awkwardly-phrased question about getting into the mind of a scallop. 

Akira had to wait more than an hour after the event to confront her. Many parents and fans had stayed behind to ask Faye to sign t-shirts, toys, Blu-ray disc jackets. Akira had to hide behind a thorny blackberry bramble and corner Faye in the parking lot, beside her van. 

“So this is the way you end things,” Akira said. “It’s real sweet.” 

“I’m sorry,” Faye said. “I thought I made my intentions clear. It was my mistake. But it was always sex in a van. Isn’t that the epitome of casual?” 

“Did you even think my daughter’s voice was special?” Akira asked. “You only did the one recording session.”

“Your daughter?” For an instant, Faye looked confused. “Oh your daughter! Allie! Her voice is pretty cool. Very saffron, very bourbon vanilla. Very woodchuck. I decided to go in another direction with my character though. I could tell from the initial recordings it wasn’t going to work.” 

“I don’t want her voice on that garbage show,” Akira said. “It doesn’t make any sense. All those talking crabs. I could probably make my own kids show, and it would be a hundred times better.” 

“Okay,” Faye said. “You’re entitled to your opinion. I’m not going to fight you on it.” 

Akira didn’t let Allie watch Mo Bananafish and Chums after that. In his spare time, he wrote negative reviews about the program on IMDB, Metacritic, Netflix, Rotten Tomatoes. He badmouthed the stuffed animals on Amazon. He developed a number of different usernames and personalities to write the scathing reviews. 

In closing one of his reviews, he wrote, “I also heard from a friend that the voice actress who does the clam and eel is a real asshole.”

Thirty minutes later, a new review had replaced Akira’s at the top of the feed. The new review said that they had met Faye Imamura before and that she was one of the coolest people they had ever met. 

How Political Revolutions Spark Literary Revolutions

Posted on by Jess Zimmerman

“War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography,” goes the old, though sadly still relevant joke. Political conflicts have always had a way of monopolizing the public’s attention, and this extends well beyond the geography lessons of current events coverage, into the culture section, too. Along with the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement, for example, we’ve seen an explosion of interest in the works of Black authors: platforms encouraging their voices, listicles promoting their books, the National Book Awards acknowledging and trying to compensate for their marginalization.

The definitive model for this relationship between political conflict and literary trend may be the Cuban Revolution. In 1959, Fidel Castro, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and the other Cuban guerillas succeeded in ousting Fulgencio Batista, a U.S.-backed dictator who had terrorized Cuba for nearly a decade. The Cuban Revolution would go further though, catalyzing not only other anti-imperialist movements, but a literary movement too—namely, the Latin American Boom, a widespread celebration of the works of authors from Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean.

The definitive model for this relationship between political conflict and literary trend may be the Cuban Revolution.

The Cuban Revolution today is overshadowed in the U.S. imagination by later events of the Cold War, but the contemporary perspective was quite different. As Tony Perrottet explains in Cuba Libre!, his nonfiction account of the era, many average Americans were at first supportive of Castro’s revolution. Throughout the ‘50s, Batista’s dictatorship received institutional backing from the U.S. government, but news of his forces torturing civilians in peace time, and committing war crimes against suspected guerilla strongholds once the revolution began, aligned public sympathy firmly with Castro, Che, and the other rebels. It undoubtedly helped that Castro, formerly a Cuban lawyer, had yet to embrace communism, instead framing the revolution as a war of independence.

The push of Batista and pull of Castro resulted in a cultural phenomenon dubbed “Fidelmania,” in which media coverage of the Cuban Revolution inspired new fashions, like beards and berets. Fidelmania reached its apex on January 11, 1959, when 50 million viewers tuned into The Ed Sullivan Show to watch the host’s interview with Castro, which was recorded just hours before the latter entered Havana, victorious.

“The people of the United States, they have great admiration for you and your men,” Sullivan told Castro. “Because you are in the real American tradition—of a George Washington—of any band who started off with a small body and fought against a great nation and won.”

The literary corollary of “Fidelmania” was the Latin American Boom. While the love affair between Castro and the U.S. public fizzled by 1960, following Cuban land reforms which threatened U.S. business interests on the island, the reading public’s interest in Latin American literature was just beginning to take hold, aided by both Cuban and U.S. efforts. As John King notes in “The Boom of the Latin American Novel,” from The Cambridge Companion to the Latin American Novel, the new Cuban state directly promoted Latin American literature by offering residencies, awarding prizes, organizing events, and even publishing a journal, Casa de las Americas. To counter communist influence, the United States promoted “developmentalism,” pushing for the integration of Latin American countries into international markets, including the arts.

While contemporary critics seldom mentioned the Cuban Revolution, the writers themselves acknowledged their debt.

The critical praise that would usher in the Latin American Boom soon followed. In 1966, the Times Literary Supplement declared Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar to be the “first great novel of Spanish America.” The next year, it won the National Book Foundation award for fiction in translation, while Miguel Angel Asturias received the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming only the second Latin American so honored. In 1970, The New York Times described One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez as “the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race.” While contemporary critics seldom mentioned the Cuban Revolution, the writers themselves acknowledged their debt even decades later.

“In a sense, the boom in Latin American literature in the United States has been caused by the Cuban Revolution,” Garcia Marquez told The Paris Review in 1981. “Every Latin American writer of that generation had been writing for twenty years, but the European and American publishers had very little interest in them. When the Cuban Revolution started there was suddenly a great interest about Cuba and Latin America.”

But if it was the Cuban Revolution that birthed the Latin American Boom, it was also revolutionary Cuba that laid the Boom to rest. King notes in his essay that the subsiding of the Boom as a literary trend in the 1970s coincided with rifts between the new Cuban state and the wider literary community. In 1971, the Cuban poet Heberto Padilla, once a supporter of the revolution, was imprisoned for criticizing the government in his work. Padilla faced a show trial, where he was forced to confess his “crimes” and make accusations against other writers, including his wife.

“This infuriated a number of intellectuals, from Latin America, North America, and Europe, who wrote two open letters to the Cuban regime complaining about Padilla’s shoddy treatment,” writes King. “Fidel Castro replied in a furious manner, castigating bourgeois intellectuals who were the lackeys of imperialism and agents of the CIA…”

(As absurd as that accusation may sound, the CIA was in fact connected to the literary establishment. Peter Matthiessen, co-founder of The Paris Review, for example, worked for the CIA in the 1950s and used the magazine as his cover while spying on communists and others.)

The question remains why it takes a revolution for readers to consider new writers.

The Boom still echoes, most clearly in the lasting appreciation of virtuosos like Garcia Marquez, but its relationship with the Cuban Revolution also demonstrates that popular political movements can inspire corresponding literary trends, much like the Black Lives Matter movement continues to inspire interest in the works of Black authors from a literary community that had previously been more hostile. The question remains why it takes a revolution for readers to consider new writers—but as Garcia Marquez suggested in his interview with The Paris Review, the search for such validation is, in part, what makes political conflict necessary.

“It was discovered that Latin American novels existed that were good enough to be translated and considered with all other world literature,” he said of the Boom. “What was really sad is that cultural colonialism is so bad in Latin America that it was impossible to convince the Latin Americans themselves that their own novels were good until people outside told them they were.”

To build upon Garcia Marquez’s criticism: The common hope of revolutionaries and writers should not be to momentarily gain access to either the rights or the recognition that have been withheld from them by gatekeepers. If revolutionaries and writers can find common cause, it should be in tearing down those gates, so that they can never be put out again.

The Real Writing Workshop Was the Friends We Made Along the Way

Posted on by Jess Zimmerman

In our series “Can Writing Be Taught?” we partner with Catapult to ask their course instructors all our burning questions about the process of teaching writing. This time we’re talking to Dario Diofebi, author of Paradise, Nevada, who will be teaching an eight-week seminar on plotting your novel: how do you structure a story without getting bogged down in formulas and rules? Dario shared with us his thoughts on pursuing lepidoptery, taking care of your reader, and coming out of writing class with a valuable network of friends.

What’s the best thing you’ve ever gotten out of a writing class or workshop as a student?

Writer friends. A network of talented people who are eager to talk about unpublished fiction with you for hours each week. It’s hard to overstate how rare this is, and how valuable. When you’re starting out especially, when it’s hard to tell yourself what you’re doing matters, being part of a group is a real blessing.

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever gotten out of a writing class or workshop as a student?

I feel like students at times make the mistake of focusing too much on the one class when their pages are workshopped, and coast the rest of the time. It’s selfish, obviously, but also shortsighted: the most vital learning you’ll do in a workshop, I find, happens while you’re reading and editing for your classmates. It makes you a better reader of your own work, which long-term is the one skill you want to take away from a workshop. In a couple years, you might not care at all about the story you were working on during that class, but the skills you’ve acquired as an editor will stay with you, and make you a better writer. 

The most vital learning you’ll do in a workshop, I find, happens while you’re reading and editing for your classmates.

What is the lesson or piece of writing advice you return to most as an instructor?

Love your reader. This has been said in many ways by many great writers, and it feels to me like the foundation all other writing advice is built upon. Writing may well be self-expression, but the most important person remains the one who chooses to give you their precious time and attention. Take good care of them.

Does everyone “have a novel in them”?

It’s plausible that everyone owns at least one really interesting story, somewhere. Not everyone has the persistence, the discipline, and, frankly, the luxury of time at their disposal to do so in novel form. Nor should they want to: there’s lots of ways to tell stories, novels are just one (and not a particularly popular one at that).

Would you ever encourage a student to give up writing? Under what circumstances?

No, I really don’t see what the point would be. But I do try to give students realistic expectations about what writing careers look like, these days. It’s easy to idealize the writing life, and the reality of it can hit hard. Ultimately though, if someone really wants to write, they’ll find a way to do it anyway. 

What’s more valuable in a workshop, praise or criticism?

In a vacuum I’d say both are equally necessary. If I think back to my own experience, though, it’s definitely praise (or really, support and encouragement) that’s helped me more.

Should students write with publication in mind? Why or why not?

It’s easy to idealize the writing life, and the reality of it can hit hard.

If by publication we mean the publishing industry, then no, it’s pointless. Chasing trends or trying to predict what that singularly irrational system will end up valuing next gets you nothing but frustration. If by “publication” we mean should we think of the reader, then yes, constantly. 

In one or two sentences, what’s your opinion of these writing maxims?

  • Kill your darlings: Cut/paste your darlings onto a separate file you promise yourself you’re going to revisit soon (though probably not). Do keep some of your darlings though: over-edited fiction feels dry and lifeless.
  • Show don’t tell: If you’re good at telling in an exciting, engaging way, go ahead and tell me things too. 
  • Write what you know: Maybe, but know lots of things. Be aware of the limits of your knowledge, respectful, and diligent, but by all means be curious. Fiction is exploration.
  • Character is plot: Sometimes, sure. But other times plot will be the thing that drives you, and your characters will have to scramble to adapt, and that’s fine too.

What’s the best hobby for writers?

Lepidoptery, I hear. I myself am partial to Rubik’s cubes though. 

What’s the best workshop snack?

I could never really feel comfortable snacking during class, but I do recommend a cup of tea.

8 Books About Reckless Decisions

Posted on by Jo Lou

Despite a lifetime of being compulsively apologetic and avoiding conflict, my favorite fictional characters are just the opposite. 

I’m drawn to the reckless and impulsive, those who refuse to toe the line. Perhaps even more so since the birth of my daughter, when there suddenly seem far fewer opportunities for heedless behavior. Instead, I live vicariously through the hedonism of others. Take Josephine, for example, the narrator of my debut novel, The Divines, who hides her past from her husband, books secret motel rooms, squirrels away a lockbox of explicit Polaroid pictures and holes up in a dive bar at nine months pregnant.  

In this vein, the books on this list are an ode to the risk-takers and thrill-seekers in novels, the wild women (and men) who make some pretty questionable life choices, throwing caution to the wind so that we don’t have to.  

The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty by Vendela Vida

At some point, haven’t we all wanted to disappear? In The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty, a woman’s backpack is stolen from her Casablanca hotel, stripping her of both her passport and identity. Faced with the prospect of returning to her old life—the regrets and bad decisions—she opts for reinvention.  

Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier

Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier

A pregnant pizza delivery girl becomes obsessed with one of her customers in this firecracker of a debut by Jean Kyoung Frazier. Downing cans of beer in her garden shed, Frazier’s loveable teenage narrator decides to follow her heart in the wake of her father’s death. 

The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante 

From Lila in My Brilliant Friend to Olga in The Days of Abandonment, Ferrante specializes in nonconforming women. In this slender thrill of a novel, Leda’s seaside vacation takes an unexpected turn when she steals a child’s doll from the uncouth family who threaten to interrupt her peaceful days on the beach.   

Luster

Luster by Raven Leilani

Luster was a blazing light in the dark days of 2020. Leilani’s irreverent and imperfect protagonist, Edie, is a woman who acts on impulse. After starting a relationship with a married man, Edie sneaks into his family home, slugs milk from his fridge and, moments later, comes face to face with his wife.  Sensual and provocative, this is a story about a young black woman—an artist—fighting to be seen.   

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

“Before my wife turned vegetarian, I’d always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way,” begins The Vegetarian, the story of a Korean woman who refuses to eat meat after experiencing a bloody dream. While foregoing pork might not seem overtly reckless at first, this is a tightly drawn story about female agency in a patriarchal world.   

Page 77 – Electric Literature

The Book of X by Sarah Rose Etter

Cassie was born with a knot, a genetic abnormality that led to her twisted torso. But that’s not the only unusual part of Etter’s story. In this surrealist gem of a novel about society’s obsession with female appearance, meat is harvested from a quarry by the menfolk. Bucking tradition, Cassie breaks through the gates in a visceral act of defiance, presses her cheek against the fleshy wall, lets the blood soak in.   

21301493

Poor Cow by Nell Dunn

Published in the ’60s, Poor Cow is the story of a working-class London girl living on the edge of poverty, so “skint” she doesn’t even have a pair of knickers to wear. A perennial daydreamer, Joy’s husband is in jail and her lover’s a thief, but that doesn’t stop her looking for fun. “Men are terrific,” she announces, slapping on her pink lippy, heading to the pub to find one.  

Astragal by Albertine Sarrazin

The astragalus is part of the ankle, the bone that Sarrazin’s teenage narrator shatters as she leaps from her jail cell in the opening scenes of this semi-autobiographical French novel. Anne is rescued by fellow criminal, Julien, and there begins this kaleidoscopic story of a woman on the lam. 

I Know You Know Who I Am by Peter Kispert

I Know You Know Who I Am by Peter Kispert

I’m fascinated by liars—their audacity, their bravado—none more so than the fabulists in Kispert’s short stories. Take the man who pays an actor to play the role of his phoney best friend, or the narrator who dons a gold crucifix, faking religion to seduce a Catholic hunk. Kispert’s stories are as much about the lies we tell ourselves, as they are characters being willingly deceitful.      

One Fjord Away from a Second Date

Posted on by Alyssa Songsiridej

Compaction Birds

Early Saturday morning I drove up the coast from the border, toward Thy. I drove past meadows with flocks of game birds. The geese don’t want to migrate anymore. They think it’s just as easy to stay in the farmers’ fields, so now they hunker there through the winter by the thousand, feeding on winter wheat and old corncobs. They trample, they compact the soil and make it hard.

As I stood on the ferry, crossing the Thyborøn Channel, I was thinking that it was a long way to drive for a woman I’d only spent a single night with. But Anja had been nice when she was waiting on us during the seminar in the national park. She’d wanted to join the dancing after dinner and seemed eager as we walked through the crowberry. She didn’t want to do it in the hotel, but there’d been primitive shelters in the area. My performance hadn’t been that impressive, yet now her ex-husband had the kids for the weekend. And she had the family summer cottage.

“Come,” she’d whispered on the phone.

There’s a powerful riptide in the Limfjord. I had to grip the railing tightly on the trip across. The fjord looked as though it were a river flowing toward the North Sea, and up on the Agger Isthmus I saw how everything that no longer had to fly away lay pooling in the lakes, and if she hadn’t been standing in the lyme grass by the driveway to a cottage a little farther north, I might well have stayed.

“But here I am,” I said as I stepped into the dunes to greet her.

She wore a light-colored dress with small sun-yellow flowers. It was a pretty dress, and she said I looked just like she remembered, and that she was awfully sorry. There’d been some sort of double booking. She’d forgotten that her mother was coming, among others. “I’m awfully sorry,” she said, and said it was too bad I’d had my cell phone switched off.

Within the cottage stood a woman in blue, with brushed bangs. She was standing with one of those cast-off mugs you find in summer cottages. It was the mother. In front of her, Anja’s sister was gesturing, and behind her sister, a niece sat in a creaking wicker chair. Out on the dunes, her brother-in-law and nephew were kicking a ball.

“The party slipped my mind. My aunt’s turning eighty,” Anja said, rubbing her forehead. There was a luncheon at a nearby inn. She had to go, she explained. For a couple of hours at least. I could stay and enjoy the cottage. “You’re very welcome to join us,” Anja’s mother said, and stepped closer. “In our family, there’s always room for one more at the table.”

I shook her mother’s hand, then I shook her sister’s. I said hi to the niece, and to the brother-in-law when he came in the door with the boy. “Anja says you work at the Society for Nature Conservation,” he said. “What are you doing about the barnacle geese?”

I never managed to answer, because Anja pulled me out onto the porch. She said she understood if I’d rather go home now. She was sorry she’d mixed things up so badly, but she was tied down. I said that she looked pretty with those freckles on her nose. She said her aunt had been recently widowed. Then she poked a forefinger into my palm, and I clutched at it.

There was some lighthearted confusion a little while later when Anja kissed me back by the outdoor shower. It wasn’t a good kiss. The yellow flowers on the sleeves of her dress seemed to be elsewhere beneath my hands. “I’m so embarrassed,” she whispered, and behind the clapboard wall the others were talking about driving to the inn together. There wasn’t enough room in her brother-in-law’s Audi, so I ended up in the passenger seat of Anja’s car, her mother behind me with her hands on my headrest.

We took the main coast road north, trailing her brother-in-law. We drove like this for a while through the national park. From the backseat, Anja’s mother spoke of the view and the place names, and she wanted to know exactly where I lived. “Tøndermarsken,” I said. “By yourself, right?” she asked, and I confirmed that I was a widower. I also mentioned that my wife had been a pastor, but that seemed to land awkwardly. Then Anja’s mother gave a recapitulation of some article she’d read in the weekly paper. It had to do with wolves and how they communicate across long distances by howling. “They’re social creatures,” she said.

In this way we drove along behind the brother-in-law until he turned into a rest stop. Anja conferred with him, while her mother worried about not getting there in time for the first course. As for me, I was looking at the flowers on Anja’s dress and the clusters of game birds lifting off from the vegetation. In the winter they would stick around: compaction birds.

What had happened was that the brother-in-law had gone north by mistake, and after a half-hour excursion in the wrong direction, we arrived at the inn well into the first course. There was a burst of applause and general merriment when we crossed the floor. If I’d known who the other guests were, I would have attempted a bit of clowning, but Anja’s was the only face present that was somewhat familiar, and she wasn’t looking up.

Seats had been set aside for the family. I sat down in the only available chair at a table that wasn’t the head table. To my left was a little man who introduced himself as a cousin from the other side of the family. He explained that it was his wife’s place I’d taken. “She never goes anywhere anymore,” he said, and then I turned to my right, where a bearded man was seated. After that, a fish landed on my plate. “Cheers!” exclaimed a wrinkled face across from me. It belonged to a woman. “It’s a good thing you made it.”

I patted Anja’s hand every time it rested on my shoulder in passing. “I’m terribly sorry about this,” she whispered, and at such moments there were eyes upon us, so Anja stopped doing it, and I didn’t feel I could go over to her.

In this fashion, the luncheon proceeded. Now and then I went to the restroom to make the time pass, and it was when I was trying to urinate again that a man stepped into the stall next to mine and unzipped. A profuse pissing commenced. I finished up discreetly, flushed, and opened the stall door, but not fast enough to escape the brother-in-law.

“Oh, it’s you!” he said, coming over to the sink. “Now we’ve pissed together.” I said it was almost as good as being blood brothers, after which we returned to the party, where the coffee had been served.

“What are you people planning to do about those barnacle geese?” he asked, pulling me down at the deserted end of a table. “And the whooper swans and the pinkfeet? I’ve had to resow my fields. My neighbor too.” I glanced around for Anja, who was being detained at the head table. “What do the ag associations suggest?” I asked. “Can you spray for them?” he said, and laughed.

I have this conversation every day, and I pointed out that it was really due to climate change. Then he wanted to know if it was also the climate’s fault that the wolves had come north to harass his cows. I explained, as I usually do, that wolves have adapted to a Europe at peace, and he maintained, as no doubt he usually does, that he didn’t want to let his kids play in the tree plantation anymore. Finally he said, “I hope you have a great view from your ivory tower, but you should know that we’re rather fond of Anja. Why don’t you try a widows’ ball down in Southern Jutland instead?”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Anja. The yellow flowers spread across the dress fabric and resembled creeping potentilla. That was something she had loved, and I always see it when I go out into the marsh. It blossoms abundantly in the groundcover, and there was something about her face, especially her mouth. Yet restless, that she was. Couldn’t be in the place she found herself. Once when we were at a dinner, she whispered to me that she felt naked without her vestments and wanted to go home. She had a way of leaving me, also in bed. When her legs began to get twitchy under the comforter, I’d place a hand on one of them and say, “A little while yet,” but it was no use, and now here was this woman Anja, sitting in the bosom of her family, tearing a napkin to pieces.

I suggested that we take a little walk, down to the water. She cast a sidelong glance at her aunt and mother and ended up standing on the beach, backlit at the water’s edge. As she stood there in silhouette, we agreed that it would be best if she drove me back to the cottage. My car was there, after all. “I feel terribly embarrassed,” she said a couple of times on the way, and I said she shouldn’t. “I did get a nice drive out of it.”

It was still warm when I drove south, and somewhere on the Agger Isthmus I pulled over at a scenic rest stop. A light breeze was flowing across the terrain. Into the landscape went a path, and I followed it until it vanished in the dunes. Then I took off my shoes. Down by the breakers, flocks of gulls. When they weren’t climbing the wind they stood frozen on the beach, gazing outward. Oddly abandoned and always on the lookout for a fish. After a while I pissed and went back to the car. There I sat, next to Route 181 southbound. The key in the ignition, the sunset, the night.

About the translator:

Misha Hoekstra is an award-winning translator. He lives in Aarhus, where he writes and performs songs under the name Minka Hoist.

A Short Story Collection about Monstrous Women and Female Ghosts

Posted on by Jo Lou

In traditional folklore, villainous women wield more power than their lawful good contemporaries. The sea witches and evil queens of European fairy tales shapeshift, scry in magic mirrors, and live in cool houses with chicken feet or gingerbread walls. Their step-daughters and maidenly nemeses kind of just…get married. 

In Japanese folklore, vengeful women often appear as yūrei, or ghosts (more specifically translated as “faint spirits”), with varying techniques for frightening those who have wronged them in life. Translated by Polly Barton, Aoko Matsuda’s collection Where the Wild Ladies Are takes these “monsters” from Japanese folklore and gives them room to breathe in the contemporary world. Human women revamp themselves into canonically monstrous forms, comfortable in their power.

In “Smartening Up,” a woman’s body hair grows so long and dark that she becomes “some other being entirely.” After earlier attempts at depilation, she ultimately embraces the hair as strength: “It doesn’t bother me if I stay a nameless monster,” she says. 

In “My Superpower,” the narrator reflects on Okon and Oiwa—two famous ghosts whose faces became disfigured. The narrator’s eczema has given her “keen observational skills…to see what the person I am talking to is really like underneath.” She observes that “Those who see others as monsters don’t notice that those monsters are looking back at them in turn.”

“A Day Off” riffs on the kabuki story Shinobiyoru Koi wa Kusemono, in which an avenging princess appears on top of a giant toad. In Matsuda’s tale, a woman and her giant toad, Gum, “provide support for women facing problems with groping, stalking, harassment, and other kinds of abuse.” But the magnitude of their task leaves the narrator with “no desire to leave [her] bedroom, where [she] can just loll around with Gum like this.”

The stories are connected by the thread of a mysterious company run by a man named Mr. Tei. Initially, we see the business as an incense company, but it soon becomes clear that they offer much more. Mr. Tei’s factory is a home for powerful women—for wild ladies. In “The Jealous Type,” a woman receives a missive from the company praising her talents: “Recognizing your capabilities at this stage, we have extremely high expectations for what you could accomplish with us into the future. In terms of arrangements for your appearance on the spectral stage, rest assured that we have a wide variety of options available…when you do pass away, please be sure to get in touch.” Some vengeful ghosts are so ahead of their time, they haven’t even died yet.

Over email, Aoko Matsuda and I discussed horror tropes, the nature of monstrousness, and, of course, the desirability of living with a giant toad. 

Deirdre Coyle: In “My Superpower,” the narrator says: “I never thought of Okon and Oiwa as terrifying monsters. If they were terrifying, so was I. If they were monsters, that meant I was a monster too.” What do you see as the primary difference between human women and monstrous women in these stories?

Aoko Matsuda: In my opinion, there is no fundamental difference between human women and monstrous women. Rather, I see a lot of resemblances between them. They’re like mirror images of one another. Monstrous women are born from this cruel men-centric world, and so are human women. Once I realized that, it struck me that I wanted to write stories to connect these two existences in a timeless way so that they can support each other. That was the starting point of this short story collection.

DC: These stories turn a lot of grudge-based horror tropes on their heads—and in different ways. Can you talk about how you reimagined ghosts’ relationships with earthly resentment, especially in stories like “Having a Blast” or “The Jealous Type”?

AM: From childhood, I’ve always been fascinated by female ghosts and monsters. So, in my eyes, jealousy and resentment seem interesting even though they’re said to be bad things that you shouldn’t feel. And if you read folklore, you can easily see the reason why human women and monstrous women come to feel jealousy and resentment: they are treated very unfairly and harshly by men and their communities. But the people around me seemed not to care about that, and were focused on how “scary” women were. It didn’t make sense to me when I was young. Now I see it’s because this is a male-centric world we live in. So, I thought, in my stories, I should consider these two negative feelings from a different viewpoint, creating a place where women can freely express their jealousy and resentment, and where these things can function as superpowers.

DC: How did you relate to ghost stories growing up? Did you feel differently about them as a child than you do as an adult?

Human women and monstrous women come to feel jealousy and resentment because they are treated very unfairly and harshly by men and their communities.

AM: I was easily frightened as a child, so I have no idea why I’ve always been so enchanted by ghost stories. Actually, when I was a kid, I loved all stories which feature non-human beings, including Greek myths and legends about the constellations. I guess I was fascinated by the idea there is always something you can’t actually see, and ghost stories are one indication of that.

And after I became an adult, I came to love them more than ever. Maybe that’s because now I can relate to the female ghosts, and understand how they might feel. I also realized they are such bad-asses, even though they look miserable and sad. One of my favorite ghost stories when I was child was Kosodate Yurei in which a female ghost tries to buy candies at a store to feed her baby in their grave. I guess I just loved it because the ghost trying to buy candies seemed a little humorous to me. Also, I loved candy. But now I can feel her, feel how desperate she was trying to save her baby. I love her so much that I decided to write her story in Where the Wild Ladies Are.

DC: In “A Day Off,” a woman relaxes with her giant toad, Gum, with whom she works as a vigilante to protect women from men. The story takes inspiration from the kabuki play Shinobiyoru Koi wa Kusemono, in which a vengeful princess tries to defeat a warrior with magic. In the very end of the play, the princess appears on a giant toad. Personally, I would love to live with a protective toad like Gum. In thinking about Shinobiyoru Koi wa Kusemono, why did you choose to have the toad be the central focus of “A Day Off”?

AM: I’d love to live with Gum, too. It would be very safe! But since it’s not possible, I wrote this story by imagining my cat as Gum. As for Shinobiyoru Koi wa Kusemono, to begin with, I just loved the title so much. This is such a great title. I haven’t actually seen this play, but I read about it and liked the image of a woman on the giant toad. I also thought the ending, with a woman and a man just glaring at one other, is so cool. Although, actually, it made me a little uncomfortable. It seemed to me as if this was a picture of the actual makeup of the world: men vs. women. Deep down, nobody wants to quarrel or fight, but the current situation in this society makes that impossible.  So, in “A Day Off,” I wanted the protagonist and Gum to take a day off from it all.

The reason why I put Gum as the center of the story is that I really wish from the bottom of the heart that someone like Gum existed, that there was some system of Gums, so that no one had to be a victim of sexual violence. It kills me that it goes on happening.

DC: What would your ideal job be at Mr. Tei’s incense company?

AM: At first Mr. Tei’s company seems to be an incense company, but it’s actually a wide-ranging and very fluid company, which we don’t have a full grasp of. All sorts of jobs are newly created to help people in need. I wanted to make a loose community where socially vulnerable people are always watched over by someone and can get help whenever they need. Because in reality, companies and societies don’t work that way, even though they should. There are also groups like Team Sarashina, made up of women who are competent in every field. Personally, I’d definitely want to join the same department as Gum. Whenever I think about sexual violence, I always wonder why I don’t have a superpower to save people.

DC: If you could be any kind of folkloric monster, what form would you choose?

AM: I would like to be a hybrid of various monsters. Saying that, I realize that the abilities of female monsters are born from the gruesome aspects of their lives or their irrepressible emotions, so maybe it’s a shallow idea to want to be a hybrid…but I do think that being a hybrid would be great.

19 Books Coming to TV and Film in 2021

Posted on by Intern Electric Lit

The movie industry had to suffer a pause unlike anything it had ever seen before when theaters had to be shuttered due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The delay in film releases came at an inopportune time for many of us, who would love to watch new cinema while isolating at home—either because it reminds us of the world we feel cut off from, or because it distracts us from a world that feels more and more dystopian. But between Netflix series and HBO streaming some new films on release, we’re still finding ways to go to the movies without going to the movies—and with these screen adaptations of classic and contemporary novels set to hit in the next year, you can also read books without reading books. Here are some of the books that will be brought to life in 2021.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

Release Date: January 22, 2021

The White Tiger is a film about a driver for a rich upper class’s couple in India who is forced to cover up a crime for his employers. Touching on the implications of India’s caste system, The White Tiger promises to be an emotional rollercoaster and a darkly funny consideration of class akin to Parasite.

Passing by Nella Larsen

Release Date: January 30, 2021

Nella Larsen’s Passing is a novel by Nella Larsen that focuses on childhood friends Irene and Clare, who cross paths as adults when Clare is living as a white woman, keeping her race secret from everyone including her husband after one writes the other a letter. Written and directed by Rebecca Hall, Passing stars Tessa Thompson and Andre Holland, which like everything they’re in, means it can’t help but going to be good.

Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah

Firefly Lane is another Netflix adaptation, from acclaimed author Kristin Hannah. The series follows two friends, played by Katherine Heigl and Sandra Chalke, from the beginning of their friendship to the present, as they experience life through three decades together.

Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi (movie title: The Mauritanian)

Release Date: February 19, 2021

Guantánamo Diary was written and published while Slahi was still imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay. The film, starring Jodie Foster, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Tahar Rahim (in the titular role), was made and is being released after Rahim is finally free, and with material that was previously censored.

Cherry by Nico Walker

Release Date February 26, 2021

Cherry teams up the Russo brothers and Tom Holland in a movie adapted from Nico Walker’s semi-autobiographical novel, written while the author was incarcerated, Holland stars as the title character, who is an ex-soldier dealing with PTSD and a drug addiction, and decides to try to rob a bank.

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness (movie title: Chaos Walking)

Release Date: March 5th, 2021

Ness is involved in writing this screenplay, so fans of his science fiction YA novel, about a world with no women where everyone can hear each other’s thoughts, can at least be assured that it will be faithful to the book. The fact that Mads Mikkelson and David Oyelowo will get the chance to out-cool themselves in scenes will only make this movie even better. 

The Reincarnationist Papers by D. Eric Maikranz (movie title: Infinite)

Release Date: May 28, 2021

Infinite is based off of the book The Reincarnationist Papers, about a man who realizes that the images he is seeing are not just hallucinations, but visions from the past. Directed by Antoine Fuqua of Training Day fame, this movie should be a lot of fun. 

Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith

Release Date: August 13th, 2021

Ben Affleck and Cuban actress Ana de Armas star in anthis adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel. Director Adrien Lyne (Jacob’s Ladder) will head this project starring the real-life couple playing a husband who is the prime suspect in the disappearance of his wife. Highsmith novels make great adaptations (see: Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley) so we have high hopes for this one.

Dune by Frank Herbert

Release Date: October 1st, 2021

There may not be a movie that is as anticipated as Dune this year, a rare feat since that might have also been true last year. Ever since David Lynch’s acid-dream of an ‘80s adaptation, it feels like Hollywood has wanted to A.) never try to remake Dune again and B.) couldn’t wait to try to remake Dune again as soon as possible. Because it is a giant space opera, half of Hollywood is involved, but piloted by Denis Villeneuve, who has slowly shifted to more and more sci-fi films since Sicario (with Arrival and Blade Runner 2049), this film looks like the rare combination of Oscar bait and potential box office hit (assuming we can go out and see movies again.)

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Release Date: December 22, 2021

The Nightingale is directed by Mélanie Laurent, whose prior directorial work includes Galveston (and who is also know for her role as Shoshana in Inglourious Basterds) and stars the Fanning sisters, Dakota and Elle, as sisters who are torn apart during the start of World War II.

The Emigrants by Vilhem Moberg

Release Date: December 25th, 2021

Moburg’s novel was published a few years after World War II and focuses on rural families. The novel, which is about a few people emigrating from Sweden to the United States in the mid-1800s, spoke to a lot of what was felt and going on at the time. Sixty years after it was first published, this story still speaks to the immigrant experience not only the moment it was written about the immigrant experience. 

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Release Date: 2021

Macbeth with Denzel Washington. 

What more do you want? This will be must-watch cinema.

The Power of the Dog by Thomas Savage

Release Date: 2021

The Power of the Dog is a dark book about two brothers who get into a fight after one of them gets married. New Zealand writer/director Jane Campion heads the film, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Jesse Plemons and Kirsten Dunst.

Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates

Release Date: 2021

Ana de Armas plays a fictionalized Marilyn Monroe, with Adrien Brody and Bobby Cannavale starring alongside her. Directed by Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jessie James by the Coward Robert Ford) fame, this will be a beautifully shot film that brings Joyce Carol Oates’s novel to life.

Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty

Release Date: 2021

Australian author Liane Moriarty’s latest novel is about nine strangers who all end up at the Tranquillum House, hoping to put the stresses of their lives and the cities away. For many of us stuck in isolation looking for a way out of our troubles, following these characters as they go through the Tranquillum House during this Hulu Series will be sure to be a treat.

Those Who Wish Me Dead by Michael Koryta

Release Date: 2021

Taylor Sheridan (of Sicario and Hell or High Water fame) writes and directs this film based on the Michael Koryta novel of the same name. As is often the case with Sheridan, the stakes are high from the beginning, as a teenager who witnesses a murder has a survival expert trying to protect him from two assassins and a forest fire. Starring Angelina Jolie and Jon Bernthal, this will be an intense film.

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

Release Date: 2021

Shadow and Bone is set in a folklore-inflected fantasy world, where protagonist Alina must develop her previously hidden magical power under high-stakes conditions. The Netflix series also includes elements of Bardugo’s bestselling Six of Crows, a magical heist novel set in the same universe. Starring Jessie Mei Li of All About Eve, this promises to be a beautifully shot series.

The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford

Release Date: 2021

Based on the bestselling novel by Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love tackles the themes of love amidst different classes and divisions of people—and during one of the more divisive periods of recent history, this seems like a timely adaptation. Originally published in 1945, The Pursuit of Love is set between the two World Wars, and will star Emily Beecham and Lily James. This show will air on BBC One.

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Release date: 2021

Delia Owens’s Where the Crawdads Sing is a murder mystery starring Daisy Edgar-Jones. The film, set in North Carolina, follows Kya, who lives in the Deep South and is a suspect in the murder of her former partner.

I Just Want to Hang Out in the Wardrobe

Posted on by Jess Zimmerman

There are—to begin, unforgivably, with a cliche—two kinds of readers: those who forget all about secret bookcases and gardens and wardrobes once they’ve reached adulthood, and those who, when they move into a new home, still immediately check every loose floorboard and knock on every wall in the hopes they’ll encounter a treasure map, a hidden room, a keyhole under the layers of paint. Of course I belong entirely to that second group, and I have spent admittedly far too much of my adult life still looking for these passageways. I have long wanted to walk through one of these secret doors, the place where the mundane—the bookstore, the country house, the nursery in Kensington—transforms into the wondrous: Fantasia, Narnia, Neverland. But lately, as the pandemic drags on into nearly a year of relative confinement, I’ve been wishing instead to stop at the threshold, to open the door of the spare room and crawl into that wardrobe and not come out again.

When I was young, I wanted the wondrous more than anything. It’s not a new story, or even a very interesting one: the child, lonely, bullied, unhappy, finds a book. And in that book, a child, lonely, unhappy, finds a place where a kind of low, slow magic still exists, where gym class doesn’t, where underdogs are issued powerful weapons and magical powers. I wanted desperately then to have adventures, to fall in love, to be a hero. And crossing over into a fantasy world was the only way I thought it could happen. 

Now, it’s not the wonderland that intrigues me; it’s the in-between, the space between the worlds.

But like children eventually do, I grew up. And I had plenty of adventures, and plenty of love affairs, and got to be a hero and a villain sometimes, too. I still looked for secret doors, but mostly out of the habit of hope. And I had a daughter of my own, and I started reading aloud to her the same children’s adventures I grew up on. As I related how cold and miserable Edmund was in the White Witch’s dungeon, or how Wendy was shot down by the Lost Boys, I realized: I’m too tired and too old for a real adventure. Now, it’s not the wonderland that intrigues me; it’s the in-between, the space between the worlds. At 42, let’s be real, I can’t imagine a talking animal giving me a magic talisman without snickering a little. The first time I thought about how the Pevensie children’s mother must have broken her heart with worry when she sent them to the country, I think I wept a little to be so grown up at last.

This is always the way of fantasy. The true wonderland is only for children, a place to escape the world of grown-ups like me. Even the most fervent believers in fairies among us will eventually take on the role of tooth fairy ourselves, slipping money under the pillow of our children or nieces or nephews. It feels sad, but it’s part of the magic; those other worlds belong to the young, a place to work out your fears and your bravery far away from the bland good intentions of the adults who make you wear bicycle helmets and eat your vegetables. The wonderland is sacred, and sealed off from adults, which makes it all the more bittersweet for those of us who continue to search for its entrance. (Of course, as the Narnia books make clear, you can still get back to Narnia as an adult: but that is a one-way passage only, at the very end of this life.)

But the wardrobe, the nursery? They are the most liminal of spaces; the place you go before and after you put away those childish things. They are the place you go before and after you grow up, like Wendy, like Susan and Peter, before and after the magic slips through your fingers. And they are still left to us; in fact, I feel they can only be truly appreciated when we are grown. They are many, and varied, and everywhere: parking lots and lobbies and stairwells, anywhere you go on your way to somewhere else. But while these mundane spaces can be uncanny or unsetting—especially during a pandemic—I am looking still for the very particular kind of secret door or false wall or grandfather clock that you step into and watch the old world fall away. The liminal space, as it relates to children’s literature, is a truly transitional place into magic, a hushed, dusty hallway between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Perhaps the most tragic thing about them is that you can’t stay there, no matter how much you may want to. They are not like Oz, or Narnia, where you can stay for a hundred years, becoming kings and queens and heroes before you finally decide to go home. They are not stopping places at all. 

They are the place you go before and after you grow up, before and after the magic slips through your fingers.

Lately, my whole life feels like a liminal state. Maybe that’s why these spaces feel so seductive—maybe I’m still having trouble finding somewhere to belong. I am not old, but not young; I’m a mother, but not for so long that I can’t remember childless days; I’m supposedly past my artistic peak, but I long to create a masterpiece. And like everyone else, I am living in the waiting room of the pandemic, itself an increasingly unbearable space with both too much dream and too much reality to bear. The pandemic has forced upon us the most static and dull of all liminal spaces; who would not long for the more fertile secret highways of children’s literature, where you can hunker down while somewhere nearby, an adventure is being born?

Even at my most practical, I’ve always felt only a tenuous hold on this world. In his The Divided Self, R.D. Laing writes about the “ontologically insecure,” who at some level, have never quite accepted or felt comfortable in reality. And so lately, with reality pressing heavy on me, I feel a deep need for a physical manifestation of the Wardrobe in Spare Oom. I want to sit surrounded by soft coats and the smell of mothballs, but also holly and fir, and fresh powder over clean untroubled earth. I want to be warm and safe but perched at the precarious edge of possibility, ready to leap into adventure though I never actually will. Though I blame this new desperation on the dull duality of liminal spaces in the pandemic, I also understand it comes, too, from my role as a parent, where I create miracles daily for my child but suffer the lack of miracles for me. 

In children’s literature, the passageways always pop up at the children’s most desperate hour of need. James is being horribly abused by his aunts when he finds his way into the giant peach. Bastian is being hunted by bullies after the death of his mother when he finds the Fantasia book in the antiquarian’s shop. Wendy has been told she must grow up and leave the nursery. The Pevensie children have been sent to the country to avoid the horrors of the Blitz in London during World War II. The passageways here are liminal spaces functioning as escape hatches from trauma and pain—too much reality. And so it’s not when our heroes and heroines get to Narnia or Neverland that the world falls away; it’s immediately on opening the wardrobe door or nursery window. Mary’s life doesn’t change on entering the garden, but rather on finding the locked door that leads to it. The children in Peter Pan learn to fly in the safety of the nursery, charged suddenly with the energy of adventure. It’s not transformation, but rather the possibility of it, that creates the space for healing for so many damaged children in literature. 

I want to be warm and safe but perched at the precarious edge of possibility, ready to leap into adventure though I never actually will.

This, to me, suggests that liminal spaces have a regenerative power of their own. They are often seen as uncanny, as creepy, because they are neither fish nor fowl, and because waiting is uncomfortable, unsettling. Waiting is, in fact, a repellent concept for most children, eager to be in action, eager for answers. But the older I get, the more restful I find the idea of waiting, of the dark cool wardrobe and the nursery at night, just before Peter comes. I think about the part in the story where the protagonists begin their journey, when they open a door and step into a darkness and the voices of the outside world fall away. I think of Dorothy, one hand on the doorknob, still and hushed in black and white, no farmhouse noises, no technicolor chaos and dead witch quite yet. I think how perfect it would be to live in that pocket in-between, when magic is possible but not yet here, when the strain and stress of heroism isn’t yet required. But as Sondheim writes in Into the Woods—an entire musical about liminal spaces and the consequences of fairy tales—“who can live in the woods?”  The Baker’s Wife goes on to sing, “Must it all be either less or more / Either plain or grand? / Is it always ‘or’? / Is it never ‘and’? / That’s what woods are for.” That’s exactly why children, uninterested in complexities, hurry to leave the liminal spaces, while adults want so much to linger in them. The truth is, no one can live in those woods. 

These days, though, I console myself—foolishly perhaps—with the thought that writing is a kind of liminal space, with all the possibilities of wonder and none of the risk. We can’t get back to Neverland once we are grown, but we can write a path through the midnight sky. We can spend the afternoon immersed in creating new secret gardens and fake walls and hidden passages. Perhaps we can live in the uncanny comfort of the liminal space after all, through writing the hallways and highways and phantom toll booths that will lead new readers there. Perhaps we liminal adults can feel we, too, belong, that the world is almost a good place for us, too, if we can remake it in these spaces. It’s pretty to think so, anyway.