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Eye on AI: A Q&A with Nina Schuyler
by Laura Cogan
In her suspenseful and thought-provoking new novel, Afterword, Nina Schuyler’s characters struggle to know themselves even as they push technology to the edge of human understanding. A brilliant mathematician, Virginia Samson has spent her life painstakingly re-creating her great love, Haru, in the form of an AI. Into this advanced technology she’s built Haru’s voice, memories, and intellectual curiosity. But while she had hoped to spend the rest of her days companionably discussing math with Haru, their interactions soon force Virginia to confront how much she has never understood about Haru, and about herself. Schuyler, who lives in the Bay […]
All too human: ‘After the Funeral,’ by Tessa Hadley
by Yastika Guru
Reading After the Funeral and Other Stories (Knopf; 240 pages) by Tessa Hadley is like watching a magic show. There is suspense, but it is not the stressful, nauseating sort of a horror movie or domestic drama—it is the sweet suspense of enchantment. The reader has some sense of the hidden techniques being employed, but the final effect is still eye-widening and gasp-inducing. Each story is about a complicated marriage or family and involves divorce or death or infidelity. Although the characters are in wobbly, anxious situations, the prose is never mawkish or emotionally fatty. Instead, it is light, plain, […]
The malleability of memory: A conversation with Mary Otis
by Laura Cogan
In her debut novel, Burst, Mary Otis traces the tumultuous lives and conflicted bond of a mother and daughter navigating the world without a robust community or safety net: they are “alone but together.” Charlotte’s eccentric, sometimes erratic behavior both enchants and repels her daughter, Viva, who seeks structure and security through a single-minded dedication to her passion for dance. But this mother-daughter duo is more alike—and more connected—than they can sometimes understand, and Otis locates the poignancy of their parallel lives with insight and compassion. Moving seamlessly between perspectives and over years, Burst elegantly examines the complexity of this […]
THE AESTHETICS OF INSCRUTABILITY: ON ‘CY TWOMBLY: INSCRIPTIONS’
by Dean Rader
I do not remember the first Cy Twombly painting I saw, but I think it might have been this: I was in graduate school. It was the ’90s. I was more than casually obsessed with Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. I had even tried translating one of the Orpheus sonnets. It was a terrible translation, but I was hooked on Rilke. Around that same time, I was reading a great deal of critical theory and found Roland Barthes utterly beguiling. Somehow, I came across Barthes’ great essay from 1979, “The Wisdom of Art,” in which he mentions one of Cy Twombly’s Orpheus pieces. I was immediately intrigued, and when I stumbled […]
New poems: ‘Giant Dipper Chronic’ and ‘To See It’
by Cate Lycurgus
“Giant Dipper Chronic” I’ve been on this coaster for decades. Car for two—but just one bar to lower—one, or none. Where I lock my heart in for the slow climb, waiting for what great heights. It trundles up the wooden scaffold, building the long pitch toward platinum surf, alternately to fog. In one, I hold my own hand. Teeth rattle out of my control; it’s crest to trough, each time. Yet I scream without sound all the way down. A flash at the top takes a photo of your dread to get you to buy it back, but—you’re too […]
New York stories: ‘Witness’ by Jamel Brinkley
by Margot Lee
Jamel Brinkley’s second story collection, Witness (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 240 pages), records glimpses of lives across New York, disparate but proximate—as though looking at people in lit windows across the cityscape. Lingering in the worlds and heads of his protagonists, Brinkley’s stories elongate these moments into chasms of psyche and memory. They remind us that whatever we see in the window, observation alone is superficial. To witness is a full-body experience, affecting the mind as much as the eye. New York is a familiar setting for Brinkley, whose debut, A Lucky Man (2018), also features stories set in the […]
Crisis mode: ‘Emergency’ by Kathleen Alcott
by Margot Lee
In Kathleen Alcott’s Emergency (W.W. Norton; 208 pages), the tales of seven women whose lives come undone create haunting depictions of desire and harm. Alcott’s first story collection following three novels, Emergency is permeated by a sense of disaster lingering in the wings and about to unfold. Her protagonists are typically clever and have ascended by their tenacity to the middle or upper-middle classes. Yet even in these stations they are endlessly reminded of the boundaries that do not get erased by their bank account balances. Several of them leave their homes, but often become trapped in their escapes. Sometimes […]
5 Questions for Napa Bookmine
by ZYZZYVA
Napa Bookmine has had a good first decade. The store opened in 2013 on Pearl Street, and this summer it moved to a larger downtown location on 2nd Street. It’s also added two other locations, one in Napa’s popular Oxbow Public Market in 2007, and the other in St. Helena. A popular destination for locals, the bookstore also draws tourists visiting Napa County, offering coffee and tea to visitors who might need a pick-me-up between wine tastings. We spoke with Napa Bookmine bookseller Lee Spangler about the 2nd Street store. ZYZZYVA: What’s the coziest spot in your store for reading? […]
No Heroes: On Cormac McCarthy, 1933-2023
by Don Waters
I liked him early on, this author. I read him, and I kept reading, hungry for more. At nineteen, a student of college literature, bored of portraits of artists and odes, I discovered the author at a used bookshop. In little time, I took to him more than any writer on my syllabus. I admired the brute stories the author put to the page. So clear-eyed, but defiant. And terrifying. An uncontained heat drew me to them. The author’s radical diction and syntax were at war with the rules I had always been taught. Punctuation be damned, the books […]
5 Questions for Kepler’s Books
by ZYZZYVA
The Bay Area is blessed to have scores of independent bookstores. One of its leading lights is Kepler’s. The Menlo Park store opened in 1955, two years after City Lights. Like that celebrated San Francisco store, Kepler’s began by selling paperbacks—books that everyone could afford. Its founder, the peace activist Roy Kepler, also ensured that the store would be a cultural center of the community, hosting numerous events that included appearances by the Grateful Dead and Joan Baez. These days, Kepler’s is a community-financed bookstore that’s paired with Kepler’s Literary Foundation, a nonprofit organization that programs events. Now in its […]
Poetry Takes Bloom
by Tess Taylor
In the late spring of 2020, when everything seemed a bit bleak, I received a phone call from my old friend Hannah Fries, a poet who’d known me when I was writing poems and working on a farm in the Berkshires. Hannah is now an editor at Storey Press, and she had a fascinating proposal for me: Would
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‘Gardeners’ World,’ or What I Did During the Plague
by Cynthia White
“Gardeners’ World, or What I Did During the Plague” For that hour, only the earth of his garden. Dark and friable as chocolate cake, thronging with nematodes and fungi, more microbes in a spoon than humans on the planet. A fear-free hour. An hour without my trip-wired heart. Were you aware the peony, like the
Subscribers only: to access this content, you must be a member of ZYZZYVA Studio. Membership is included with any subscription. Subscribe today, or if you are already a subscriber, log in to continue reading. (Read our FAQ for more details, and contact us if you have any trouble logging in.)
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