Discussion

Excellent article! I can almost feel the oppressive Michigan heat as the writer describes her ride in the hot car. Ms Schuster's writing evokes a time and place since forgotten, where little girls can still dream about far away places not yet visited, rather than search them on Google. Wonderful!

La campaña.

En el candor
de la campaña
esta dulce
poesía camina
incesante como
un ave feliz en
el canto del sueño.

Francesco Sinibaldi

Full of interesting stuff!

Sharing on my web desig idea. Thank you a lot

By kasem

Fantastic. Thanks for this fascinating interview!

Thank you for your comments; yes of course you are allowed to dissent. Often writers have to bend the rules of grammar to achieve the stylistic results that they desire. One writer's mistake is another's achievement: resulting in a variety of styles and voices that obey diverse sets of principles. I don't agree that the piece approaches cliché, or rather if it does, then it repeatedly turns that threat to advantage. You'll be pleased to hear that the Britain issue will be coming out soon.

La timidité de la nature.

En marchant
dans le soleil
le nuage touche
le profil du
printemps, et
aussi la lumière
décrit le silence
d'une rime
désolée.

Francesco Sinibaldi

My comment on Maddison Smartt Bell's story has been removed by the moderators - presumably because they considered it abusive or offensive. It was neither of these things. It was a critical post about a story I thought was a rambling, poorly punctuated piece of work. Am I not allowed to dissent from the Editors point of view ?

Out of the Tombs: Madison Smartt Bell

This tedious story is garbled in its narrative and incompetent in its execution. The writer has no sure grasp of punctuation. He uses commas as breathing marks, without any regard for their purpose.

Behind him, x he could hear the leaves of trees in the park,x shifting in the moving air.

A metal portcullis,x of almost medieval aspect…

One hand held a long staff,x with a tiny brass bell springing from the top it. (?)

He uses commas in front of conjunctions - and, or, but etc – although the point of conjunctions is to join two sentences:

The baking heat of the day had lifted,x and a pleasant breeze came from the north.
A woman was coming from the same direction, walking very carefully,x as if on eggshells,x or the rolling deck of a ship…

Paul sometimes practiced tai chi there,x in early mornings when the city breathed quietly,x or at other times,(?) waiting for a call from the courts, he might play Chinese chess at one of the picnic tables…

This last sentence is nonsense.

It’s difficult to see the virtues in this story for which the editors selected it. Madison Smartt Bell’s writing exhibits all the faults of the creative writing student: a reliance on simple sentences and a reluctance to make complex sentences or relative clauses; obvious, uninteresting language. Cliché is close to the surface of the writing. (… as if on eggshells…). The narration of events if lumberingly filtered through the point of view character’s perception of them, so that whether or not they are clear to him, they are indistinct to the reader:

The restaurant was closed and dark, so it must be very late…( surely must have been…)

The woman moved the point of her chin,x and looked as if she might have curtseyed…

The vagueness of the language does not establish an hallucinogenic or hypnogogic effect. Quite the reverse.

Out of the Tombs is an example of Granta’s tendency to prefer the voguish second-rate US writer to anything startling home grown.

Gentle delight....

Often, in
your memory,
the sound of
a swallow
appears near
a white cloud
recalling the
youth.

Francesco Sinibaldi

Thought experiment:
If this one death, Stephen Lawrence's, were to lead to, on a societal level, an honest and fundamental shift away from racial prejudice, would the death be worth it?

I must say, this poem has also made my day. I was a student at Stony Brook. I'm presently on disability, because of Lupus. Lupus Nephritis, too. Fortunately my kidneys are stable, but the powerful meds I'm on make it hard to even exist. Even so, there is no woe here; I pursue poetry, my own and experiencing others. I'd read Baudelaire's essay on Wagner fully today, were I not so ill. But you, Mr. Phillips, have made my day. :-) Thank You. I'd write something more profound, but am rather tired from the bucketfuls of vomit/bile I produced yesterday! Thank You.

Appreciation for instruments like the Gaduka has been lost, I fear.

This bit of fiction is absurdly overwrought, playing to the basest of racially tinged stereotypes. As a resident of the area supposedly depicted, I laughed out loud numerous times. As is so often the case, there's much more to the story than Bill will ever know from a thoughtless, irresponsible windshield survey. Thankfully, the war mentality he proposes has not taken hold in my neighborhood and residents lead a much fuller life neither dominated nor hardly even impacted by his "rednecks versus foreigners" fantasies.

Thanks for shedding some light on a rapidly approaching problem. As a country we need to wake up before the problem becomes so big we are at a loss to combat it & start seeing dismembered bodies in rural America. If it can take hold in Clarksville & New Albany it can get a grip anywhere we turn a blind eye. Great piece here Frank.

El viento sopla.

El silencioso
viento sopla
en el llanto
de una casta
armonía, la
misma pasión
que candida
viene....

Francesco Sinibaldi

Fun recollection, thanks for sharing. Sounds like Crackhead Rob should've stuck to hustling the suckers, but the allure of challenging Buck was just too strong for him. Reminds me of how successful low stakes poker players often cannot resist playing higher stakes until they go bust. Interesting to learn about your personal experience in Ecuador too.

This story you’re putting up about your house and its history is wrong.
I know for a fact as I am part of the family who previously lived there.
I know of how this “bad person” Mr. Gorvalla
was and how far from the truth you and your family are about calling him a donkey rider and low life.
It hurts to see the name of the family being tarnished
and false information being told.
If you want a little information about him go to if still there somerset hospital. One of the wings is dedicated to him. A statue and plaque were erected because of all the proceeds he gave in support to them. I think it might be the west wing, I’m not too sure.
There’s a whole bunch more to the false informed story you are telling...

It was actually what i was seeking for, I am very thankful and very happy to see your blog. I am waiting for your another post.

Vous êtes....

Le blond chant
de la jeunesse
décrit la lumière
d'un tendre
oiseau: avec le
sourire, dans
l'aube d'un poème
qui souffle avec
toi.....

Francesco Sinibaldi

A wonderfully spooky Faustian story about the ends of conspicuous consumption. I love the idea of an art work / dinner party in which the last, tragically literal members of mythical species are served up in immensely complicated dishes – as if Judy Chicago collaborated with Borges and Ferran Adria. The story is full of striking images and incidental delights, like the description of the devil’s writing style as “casual wit and nasty self-satisfaction” – keep that in mind as you read the next issue of the TLS.

Wow that is a really interesting article thanks for sharing it.

Ms. Muir's story is grimly tactile, if somewhat obvious in the conclusions one can draw from the suggested mortality of the pregnant wife, that if we are the species of mass consumption, then we only consume ourselves, but I may read this again, have I the time.

Spiritual mind.

The new
summer is a
splendid idea
that appears
in the morning
with a delicate
thought.

Francesco Sinibaldi

What an extraordinary piece of writing giving us an insight into what is really happening in Cairo. I look forward to tomorrow's piece.

This is a beautiful essay Kong. I live in Los Angeles, CA and I also value my solitude above everything besides reading, though that is a special form of solitude. I wanted to tell you that people from China visit my blog and that is thrilling to me. The sentence I like the best in your essay is: "I always think, either as a reader or as a writer, one person-anyone-can struggle against this filthy world by entering into a world of literature." I feel that way as well.