Chapter 29
Once Joselyn was sitting in her armchair and she saw me struggling to write an email because I kept getting a redline under what was supposed to be “permanently”.
“Do you want a way to fix that?”
“Yes.”
“Alright. Face me.” And we turned in our armchairs which were side by side and she looked into my eyes. I knew not to blink. I relaxed my eye muscles so they could dilate and accept the knowledge within the incantation she’s about to give like downloading an update.
Family History Of X
by Lori Jakiela
When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, my doctor, Dr. Johnson, who looked like the late great comedian Norm MacDonald and told late-great-comedian jokes and liked to draw stick-figure breasts on a whiteboard to show surgical options, asked, “Do you have a family history?”
Dr. Johnson had already drawn a pair of disembodied breasts before he asked this. The breasts and nipples were squared off, like they’d been built with Legos.
In our morning reading: an interview with Emma Copley Eisenberg, revisiting a Roger Ebert opinion, and more.
In our afternoon reading: an interview with Sari Botton, thoughts on Halle Butler’s new book, and more.
It’s hard to find the right way to describe Ananda Lima‘s new book Craft: Stories I Wrote For the Devil. On the simplest level, it’s a collection of uncanny stories, many of them involving the act of writing and a series of ominous Satanic presences. But there are also — as the title implies — subtle links between all of the works in the collection, establishing this book as more than the sum of its (impressive) parts. I talked with Lima about the genesis of Craft, its relationship to her poetry, and the art of structure.
In our morning reading: Charlie Jane Anders on bookstores, reviews of books by Eugene Marten and Sable Yong, and more.
Seek and Ye Shall Find
by Shawna Ervin
Lost
1984. Scott Hamilton won the Olympic gold medal for men’s figure skating in Sarajevo that February. He trained at a rink near where I lived with my parents and younger brother. I was nine, in third grade. I hadn’t paid attention to figure skating before, and probably hadn’t paid much attention that year either. My parents were conservative Christians. TV—like the radio, movies, alcohol, smoking, dancing, and anyone outside of our small, fundamental world—was to be feared and avoided at all costs.
In our weekend reading: new fiction by Antoine Volodine and Emily Schultz, revisiting the music of Sade, and more.