My faith in reading — shattered by texting, an increasingly illiterate America, and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills — has been restored by a book about a walk in the park. Sergio Chejfec‘s My Two Worlds (Open Letter Books; 120 pages), translated by Margaret B. Carson, concerns itself with one walk in one park: a green expanse in the unnamed Brazilian town where Chefjec, a visiting Argentine academic, is attending a literary festival where he imagines himself looking “like a fugitive trying to blend in.” Consulting a map, seeing that green spot, he feels his heart race: “For me […]
Contributor: Anneli Rufus
You Don’t Want to Know
by Anneli Rufus
Anneli Rufus is the award-winning author of several books, including Party of One: The Loner’s Manifesto, California Babylon: A Guide to Scandal, Mayhem, and Celluloid in the Golden State, and The Farewell Chronicles: How We Really Respond to Death. Her work has appeared in East Bay Express, the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon.com and Psychology Today. She lives in Berkeley.
“You Don’t Want to Know” is an original essay for ZYZZYVA’s website. It’s one of a group of connected essays Anneli Rufus has been working on. “The basic theme,” she writes, “is the darkness and hilarity of life with paralytically low self-esteem.”
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