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Issue No. 127
by ZYZZYVA
Dream states: A conversation with Ed Park
by Evelyn Ch'ien
How do we share history after it has already been claimed? That is the question at the heart of Ed Park’s latest novel. A fiction finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, Same Bed Different Dreams is a riveting, revisionist take on Korean and American history—or at least what is assumed to be Korean and American history. The reconstruction of history from 1919 to the contemporary era, with multiple characters intersecting through parallel timelines, propels the head-spinning momentum of the book, centered on the true but stealth, ghostlike existence of […]
The memory of murder: The San Ysidro massacre, 40 years later
by Kevin Smokler
1. The monument consists of twenty-one hexagonal marble pillars set in a pyramid. The pillars range in height between one and six feet, representing the range in age of the victims. The oldest was seventy-four and had stopped to pick up hamburgers on the way to visit his grandchildren. The youngest was six months old and died in the arms of his mother, also murdered. 2. The plaque in front of the monument reads, “Dedicated as a living memorial to those who died so tragically on July 18, 1984 and to those survivors who continue to bear the scars of that […]
Close quarters: ‘Blue Ruin,’ by Hari Kunzru
by Olivia Kane
Coming out of the pandemic, one could be forgiven for not wanting to dive into a novel set during that not-so distant past. Hari Kunzru’s Blue Ruin, however, vividly captures the anxiety of a world in quarantine while simultaneously offering a riveting glimpse into the lives of artists struggling to survive. Jay, the protagonist of Blue Ruin (Knopf; $28), is a former artist who finds himself delivering groceries to the wealthy in upstate New York. After contracting COVID-19, his hard-hearted New York City landlord casts him out of his apartment. It is under these circumstances that he makes a delivery […]
Road Warrior: ‘Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell’
by Paul Wilner
There’s some grainy footage of a 1966 performance by Joni Mitchell on a show called “Let’s Sing Out” for students at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. When you first see Mitchell, she looks like “girl singer’’ furniture, a la Mary Travers, as the trio she’s playing with motor through a painfully corny tune that could be an outtake from A Mighty Wind, the documentary spoof about a folk music reunion concert. But wait. When Mitchell steps forward to sing her deeply autobiographical tune, “Urge for Going,’’ you feel a collective breath going out, not just from the audience but from […]
Individual Medley
by Dale Davis
On the hillside west of the swimming pool, men with shovels followed the line of the fire, turning dirt onto glowing patches. Above them, on the ridge, a bulldozer clanked and roared as it cut a gap. The fire burned slowly through the dampened yellow grass, flaring only when a bush caught. Ashes lifted and
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It’s Nice to Be With You Always: Remembering Neeli Cherkovski
by Joshua Bodwell
“I am the way I am / because nobody could convince me / to be otherwise” — From “Hello,” by Neeli Cherkovski The first time I ever read the name Neeli Cherkovski was on my seventeenth birthday. My father gave me a copy of Charles Bukowski’s Septuagenarian Stew and there on the dedication page it declared: For Neeli Cherkovski. Years later, Neeli told me with a chuckle, “That’s the best line he ever wrote.” Shortly after gifting me Septuagenarian Stew, my father gave me his own old hardcover copy of Neeli’s biography of the poet, publisher, and bookseller Lawrence Ferlinghetti. […]
More, more, more: ‘All Things Are Too Small,’ by Becca Rothfeld
by Marius Sosnowski
Hunger is a need. Desire is a need stylized, like hunger filtered through the imagination. But where hunger feeds function, desire seeks expression. Ever since Montaigne invented the form, great essays revel in their attempt to express desires and their ability to articulate the revelatory. Accordingly, great essays become food for the imagination. And a well-fed imagination, it follows, is good for all. Full of verve, wit, and no shortage of voluble passion, Becca Rothfeld’s debut collection of essays, All Things Are Too Small (Metropolitan Books; $27.99), investigates today’s conditions of love and desire and suggests what it might take […]
Down to a science
by Ben Greenman and ChatGPT
I am in a basement.I see. Is there anything specific you need assistance with while you are in the basement?I do need assistance, though perhaps not in the way you are thinking. Which raises an interesting question. Are you, in fact, thinking?As an AI language model, I do not “think” in the same way that
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Literary treat: ‘Bite By Bite,’ by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
by Jonah Raskin
There couldn’t be a better title for the latest book by Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees (Ecco; $26.99). This account by the author of the popular essay collection World of Wonders serves vivid, heartfelt vignettes about food and four generations of family—from her grandparents and parents to her children who devour the often distinct and wonderful fruits that their mother puts on the table with panache. Nezhukumatathil’s children may not know or remember that “jamborees” are defined as boisterous celebrations; aptly, the word has no known origin. She writes that her favorite fruit is the jackfruit, which […]
Naked truths: ‘Tits Up,’ by Sarah Thornton
by Mieke Marple
Tits are back, baby. “Breasts,” a show of tits throughout the ages, just opened at the ACP Palazzo Franchetti in Venice for the Biennale. This comes on the heels of “Darker, Lighter, Puffy, Flat” at the Kunsthalle Wein, which examined the significance of breasts, from the maternal to the sexual to the biological. Last year, there was also “Boobs in Art” at Berlin’s DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM, a comprehensive exhibition of 100 artists grappling with mammary glands that included a painting by Paula Modersohn-Becker from 1906, considered the first self-depicted nude by a woman. Sarah Thornton’s new book, Tits Up: What […]
The Blue Angels / The Spirituals App
by David Roderick
The Blue AngelsHave you heard the sound of themduring Fleet Week the threat of our bruteaerial power flaying whole afternoonsin formation and turgid fumes over the Baymy friend at the Chron says they fly700 mph and 18 inches apartskimming the filigree of a sound barrieruntil they bang through foglike a truncheon hitting a skull I
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The Art of Stories: A Conversation with Steve Almond
by Christine Sneed
Steve Almond is one of the few writers whose books I await with genuine impatience, and his newest was no exception. I read Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow: A DIY Manual for the Construction of Stories (Zando; $18) in a few fervid sittings, underlining passage after passage, Almond’s characteristic wisdom and wry sense of humor wholly present in each of the book’s four sections. Truth Is the Arrow is an addictive blend of fiction-writing craft essays, writing prompts, and poignant reflections on the challenges and felicities of making a life as a writer. Almond is also the […]