Issue Four
November 2023
Issue Four is blue – sky blue. In its pages: Schwarzeneggerology, Xi Jinping’s big beige books, peripheral Europe, art avant l'art, palindrome divas, medieval darlings, Jim Jarmusch baking a cake and S. Ansky sharing a secret from beyond the grave. Plus: some truly bad writing advice.
Europe disenchanted
A broad cast of characters who almost all speak to a solitary woe. This is Europe? Ben Judah depicts a continent of islands, hollowed of associational life.
The big beige books
The most important unreviewed books of our times, reviewed. On Xi Jinping’s The Governance of China, Volumes I to IV
Two palindromes
→ Setting of the Sun at West Mountain / Puffing & panting ←
→ Worm-eaten Rimbaud / Always knowing whom ←
日落西山 & 蟲蠹的蘭波
→ 日落西山 / 國是前胸 ← → 蟲蠹的蘭波 / 始終知誰 ←
Schwarzeneggerology
On Arnold, action cinema & Übermenschlichkeit. « Arnold Schwarzenegger was action cinema’s Adamic man, alternately entering and exiting normal human time. »
Hitchhiker
A story about danger. « She wondered when he was going to ask her where she was going. »
Otostopçu
« Eylül adamın ‘ne tarafa gidiyorsun’ diye sormasını bekledi »
Streuselkuchen
Eine Geschichte über Coolness. « Das Telefon klingelt. Jim Jarmusch ist dran und fragt, ob ich nicht bei ihm vorbeikommen will. »
Streuselkuchen
A story about coolness. « The phone rings. It is Jim Jarmusch, and he asks if I want to come over to his place. »
Five uneasy pieces
How I stopped being an older brother (& other stories)
Visit the extractocene!
The Eisenthür silver mine is real; the village below is entirely fictive.
Pigeon Water
Online, pigeon water is what we swim in and slather on ourselves.
Forget your darlings
On memory palaces, medieval and modern. A medieval woman’s life would not have taken the form of a straight line.
Bad writing advice
Writing advice is everywhere. Some of it might even be good! But we were interested in the bad.
Trouble at work and home while my son is abroad
A story about living. « I have a family and I have a job and I have a teaching gig, and these things have me. »
The original Dybbuk
A story about afterlife. « A saint! What do you mean he’s a saint! the scholar says. He’s a librarian! Are librarians saints? »
The case of the missing elephant
On animal charisma and animal vengeance. What happens when an elephant goes missing a year after her death.
Every end has a start
In 2005, Yamandú Roos embarked on the photographic project Europeans: one continent, forty countries, 65.000 kilometers.
Reviewed in this issue
This is Europe: The Way We Live Now
Reviewed by Gabriel Rom
The Governance of China, Volume I
Reviewed by Stephan Petermann
The Governance of China, Volume II
Reviewed by Stephan Petermann
The Governance of China, Volume III
Reviewed by Stephan Petermann
The Governance of China, Volume IV
Reviewed by Stephan Petermann
Cro-Magnon: The Story of the Last Ice Age People of Europe
Reviewed by Christy Wampole
Christine de Pizan: Life, Work, Legacy
Reviewed by Marisa Libbon
Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It
Reviewed by Marisa Libbon
The Wife of Bath: A Biography
Reviewed by Marisa Libbon