“I had a more pressing social problem: I did not know how to tell a white lie. I didn’t even have the grace to realize when you should tell a white lie. In my own well-meaning way, I was becoming a bit of an asshole. “I plead the fifth” was my catchphrase. In England.”
Susan Howe on the art of poetry: “I often think of the space of a page as a stage, with words, letters, syllable characters moving across.” And discussion excerpts from the First Annual Norwegian-American Literary Festival, including Donald Antrim, Elif Batuman, Graywolf publisher Fiona McCrae, and Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier.
New fiction from James Salter, Rachel Kushner, Sarah Frisch, Tim Parks, Peter Orner, and the winner of the NPR Three-Minute Fiction Contest, and an essay by J. D. Daniels.
Poems by Ben Lerner, Linda Pastan, Devin Johnston, Yasiin Bey, Geoffrey Hill, Regan Good, Joshua Mehigan, and Steven Cramer. A portfolio of images that inspired Rachel Kushner’s novel The Flamethrowers.
Really into this, obviously. (You haven’t seen Reprise? It’s streaming online.)
“Don’t even get me started about having to watch Claire Danes age into a sinewy ballerina of a woman, her even skin and taut limbs offering no proof that she was ever a teenager at all. It’s like watching a dear friend—your sister, a twin—wear a diamond ring the size of a lighthouse, move to the suburbs, and vanish forever. I say this knowing that Claire Danes (the actress) is not the same as Angela Chase (the character), but memories are no more rational than dreams.”