Memory
The size of longing
published in
On Jacob Israël de Haan’s Palestine and Arnold Zweig’s novel of post‑Zionist disillusionment
Forget your darlings
published in
On memory palaces, medieval and modern. A medieval woman’s life would not have taken the form of a straight line.
The pulverization of memory
published in
Write your memoir in a hostile tongue. On Marina Jarre, from Latvia to Italy and back.
A Silence Shared
published in
« 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. »
When the world makes rags of us
published in
He spoke of painting like a starving man speaks of food. On Józef Czapski, Memories of Starobielsk and the art of observation.
« When I was silent… » — Interview with Sulaiman Addonia
published in
Stop! I am doing what they all do: presenting writer Sulaiman Addonia as one-who-has-suffered, because he grew up as a refugee. It is a problem of genre. Suffering has become an interviewer’s crutch.
Two palindromes
published in
→ → Pursuing / you lead me to come to the future.← ← coming to the future, I lead you / demanding.
The room I am in
published in
Tight pants. Fashionable coats. Music. Defiant looks. On the last men & women who passed through the Bulgarian gulag.
Planes, tanks & automobiles
published in
You could tell the US army had arrived because the local garages had sold out of whiskey. Old maps, new wars & vanishing memories along the Polish-Ukrainian border.
All is not vanity
published in
Lose, delete, restore. What to remember when everything is always, forever, in a digital now?
On paths not taken
published in
« Genocide Studies » is a house with many rooms. It accommodates and even encourages a broadening of its central concept. And like all academic fields, it presumes its object of study will always be there.