A black cat sneaks across a flower bed toward a shed, past some asters, and squeezes into a gap an arm's width wide. I watch the swirling dust calm in the evening sun and her black fur disappear into the darkness of a wooden void. I sip my drink. Some worn-down club-goers lay wasted on sofas, sweat and smoke in a late-summer landscape.
...
My encounter with the cat made me think of my excursions into Club- und Katzenliteratur. I've been interested in clubs as sites of regulated chaos for the creative channeling of urban voids — I formulated this 'thesis' after a few nights of research in sound, smoke and industrial dust.
An iron curtain makes a powerful canvas. Images from Sven Johne & Falk Haberkorn’s Aus Sicht des Archivs, documenting life in the former East Germany in the 1990s.
From the office of the future to the office of the past. What endures?
On Natalia Ginzburg’s Valentino, newly translated: a Q&A with Alexander Chee.
Marcovaldo; or, The Seasons in the City, translated by William Weaver (Harcourt, 1983).