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.
On Natalia Ginzburg’s Valentino, newly translated: a Q&A with Alexander Chee.
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.
How I stopped being an older brother (& other stories)
Marcovaldo; or, The Seasons in the City, translated by William Weaver (Harcourt, 1983).