Magnum Mysterium
by Lucie Brock-Broido
I’ve had a pretty hearty dose of insomnia for the past few weeks (months? years?) now. So, natch I’m going online to figure out how to cure it (although I just read somewhere recently that self-diagnosing online actually makes people more ill than they previously were. Not good for those of us who are hypocondriacs!) and here is some of the advice I’ve found so far:
* Avoid using your bed for anything other than sleep or sex.
* Sleep with Your Head Facing North
Frog and Peach is an interesting story from the current issue of the Black Warrior Review.
Typically, I shy away from “break up” stories (guy gets dumped and pines for the perfect girl who left him. boo fucking hoo! oh, except the one break up-esque novel I really, really like is Ann Beattie’s Chilly Scenes of Winter) but this one has something special to it with the introduction of the precocious little girl dining alone in the waiter narrator’s new section (which was also his ex-girlfriend’s section). The story ending is just so creepy to me, which is what draws me to the piece as a whole. I wonder what is going to happen next and, ultimately, I don’t want to know what is going to happen next. Or am I just reading too much into it?
A charming interview with the charming David Toussaint and three wonderful poems by Simon Perchik.
Through a new effort, Wikinews, members of the open-source community who write and edit Wikipedia’s encyclopedia entries are encouraged to test their skills as journalists. The news site follows a similar set of rules as the encyclopedia, which allows anyone to edit and post corrections to entries, so long as each change is recorded.
View the Wikinews demo.
Gacela of the Dark Death
by Federico García Lorca
Lynn Freed’s collection of short stories The Curse of the Appropriate Man reads as though one is sitting in a room with many women and each one is offering her confession, a deep secret, which is meant only for you, the reader. Only you will understand and not judge. Only you can be trusted. As such, it reads with great honesty and there is nothing I enjoy more in writing than honesty.
The most striking of the stories for me is “The Widow’s Daughter”. A tale of a beautiful girl whose mother refuses to pay a dowry for her daughter. The awful, lecherous father dead, the two women are left to make their way. It seems the mother always used the daughter as her object (as did the father):
Ever since Irma had been a girl, her mother had sent her out among men with trays and drinks, or to play the piano, or to sing. Irma shone and burned among men, she left them burning and shivering themselves. It was as if mother and daughter had it arranged between them, people said, cause and effect.
In continuing to do so even after the death of her husband, the mother marginalizes her daughter, sees her not as a human being but as an object. As such, she starts to look at her daughter through the eyes of a man:
During supper, Flora Gershin did not take her eyes off Irma. The girl moved like a dancer from the sideboard to the table. When she ate, she lifted her eyes to the stranger. She asked softly whether he wanted more soup. More fish? She was an actress, this girl, she was a dancing girl and a whore, and Flora Gershin wanted to get up from the table and take her in her arms herself.
In the end the two women are left alone as they were in the beginning. Their future is uncertain, though Irma, believes the writing is on the wall—that she will escape:
She saw Albert Kessel, and she saw herself, as if already she were living the other girl’s life.
Freed could keep good company with Grace Paley, as far as consistency and clarity of voice are concerned. She maybe lacks some of Paley’s empathy but makes up for it in smart, dry wit. As with Paley, Freed’s stories are masterful in their simplicity. There is nothing superfluous.
The Curse of the Appropriate Man is a smooth and elegant collection of stories, pulling together many cultures, many times, many places, yet leaving the reader feeling as though she has heard one consistent song–that of a woman looking for her place in the world.
The Creation of the Moon
by Anonymous
Translated by W. S. Merwin
Of the world’s favorite words, Mother is at the top of the list:
More than 40,000 people in 102 countries were polled by the British Council to mark its 70th anniversary.
Mother, passion, smile, love and eternity were the top five choices – but father did not even make it into the list of 70 words.
But some unusual choices did make the list, such as peekaboo, flabbergasted, hen night and oi.
Read the whole story.
Giving Thanks
by Josephine Redlin
Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life was published on this day in 1859. At this point when some American textbooks are being labeled with evolution disclaimers, I’m choosing to celebrate this birthday loud and proud.
Happy Birthday to you, The Origin of the Species!
myfanwy collins 