Love
Animal game
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A story about family. « ‘A woman of few words,’ he smiled. ‘How refreshing.’ »
The size of longing
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On Jacob Israël de Haan’s Palestine and Arnold Zweig’s novel of post‑Zionist disillusionment
Ice queens, sex machines
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Insofar as erotica can ever be about something, what is Russia-themed erotica about?
What an animal isn’t
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Two vastly different books — one a picaresque tale, the other a dystopian meditation — both recount a transition from human to animal or from animal to human.
From the knacker’s yard
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On the fallen animals loved by Heinrich von Kleist & Curzio Malaparte.
Trouble at work and home while my son is abroad
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A story about living. « I have a family and I have a job and I have a teaching gig, and these things have me. »
On location
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Mission: Impossible and Eurocentric stunts, from Hollywood to Hong Kong. What does an action movie want to be?
Perhentian Sunrise
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A story about romance. « The eve of a suitor’s arrival, bigger than Christmas or birthday, I tell you. »
A Silence Shared
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« If a story just like that one — dying babies, divine retribution — had come back to me from childhood memories, it would have seemed fantastical, unreal. »
No money off a dead woman’s body (& other poems)
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« I like my tyrants like I like my heroes. That is, crushed by a giant chandelier. »
When the world makes rags of us
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He spoke of painting like a starving man speaks of food. On Józef Czapski, Memories of Starobielsk and the art of observation.