New World Writing Quarterly

Begin

Begin with a thing. Make it a spar­row. A spar­row cling­ing to the stem of an Easter Lily. Make the spar­row silent. We don’t want too many voic­es this ear­ly on. Let the lily speak for itself.

Enter

Now, enter. This –more

COWBOY BOOTS

Sometimes an urge takes hold of us and pulls us onto the dance floor
even though we only want to sip our drink and observe.

I don’t mean one of those sud­den, fleet­ing urges
like pee­ing off the back of the boat

or –more

On the day we flee town, we will want the neigh­bor­hood to know what hap­pened. We will tell sto­ries about our step­fa­ther to the kind and not-so-kind men on our street, to the cops who size us up to see if we are under­age, –more

The para­troop­ers fall and as they fall
They mow the lawn. –Wallace Stevens

Everyone was talk­ing about a phi­los­o­phy of life. It seemed impor­tant and the kind of thing that could stand one in good stead for years to come. Things –more

            We all live poor­ly here. Use mail-in rebates at the hard­wood store, get drunk at Sammy’s on Friday nights, and let our chil­dren run around in their –more

Late but not quite mid­night. Marina Melba stands on the com­mu­nal bal­cony of the flats. She pulls a cig­a­rette with ele­gance from a pack­et. Lights it with­out look­ing, eyes fixed on the balustrade and fog­gy sky. 31st December is the date.

            Tess –more

The hotel key was ours. A rec­tan­gu­lar piece of hard plas­tic with the words PLAY SLEEP REPEAT on the front. New York City. That humid sum­mer day when it rained frogs and peo­ple shield­ed them­selves with their umbrel­las, only –more

We’re togeth­er again, three old buds stand­ing in a dark clos­et at our thir­ti­eth high school reunion. We can hear the eight­ies music from the audi­to­ri­um one floor below us. What are we doing? I’d let Larry tell you, but –more

Her hair some­times sailed on her. She was a point in the dis­tance, as if the entire uni­verse had poured from a con­ver­gence. She thought, It’s just as well.

     Hardwick under­stood her, if he were also –more

Hatchings

Parades always made her tired, so it wasn’t sur­pris­ing that the assas­sin fell asleep on the roof.

As she napped, the roof became quite crowded.

A fam­i­ly of six had a pic­nic, fried chick­en and pota­to sal­ad. Their baby gummed lime gelato.

The super pre­tend­ed to repair the cool­ing duct. His tool­box was full of ale.

An octo­ge­nar­i­an who had learned to swim in the Baltic Sea leaped into the wood­en water tow­er for her dai­ly laps.

A boy wear­ing an aviator’s hat fed his pigeons. One of the birds, Charles, was wor­ried about Amelia, his mate. She hadn’t returned from their after­noon flight. The boy under­stood, so he stroked Charles’ head and whis­tled, “Volière.”

The octo­ge­nar­i­an climbed out of the tow­er only to dis­cov­er that she had for­got­ten her tow­el. The fam­i­ly cleared their pic­nic and after apol­o­giz­ing for the crumbs and green stains, wrapped her in their plaid blan­ket. She invit­ed the fam­i­ly, the boy, and Charles to her apart­ment for choco­late cov­ered prunes.

The Super emp­tied his last bot­tle, closed his tool­box, walked toward the rail­ing to take in the view and almost stepped on the assas­sin. He noticed her rifle. Italian. A Marinetti. He picked it up and looked through the scope. There was an old hen cir­cling the build­ing. The sky was melt­ing like a Creamsicle. He clicked off the gun’s safe­ty and tucked it under the assassin’s arm.

The assas­sin dreamed that she was a girl in her bed­room hav­ing a pil­low fight with her sister.

Feathers fell through the air, tick­ing their cheeks.

–

Insomnia

My doc­tor rec­om­mend­ed that I rent one of those birds trained to whis­tle lullabies.

I was dubi­ous, but desperate.

On the dri­ve from the rental place, Polly per­formed a beau­ti­ful ren­di­tion of “Scenes from Childhood” fol­lowed by Satie.

I was hopeful.

Once home, I broke her neck, plucked, cut, brined, bast­ed and a few hours lat­er: Perroquet au Vin! Lovely.

And you know what—it worked! I slept like the dead.

Of course, the rental place charged me a late fee.

Que sera, sera.

–

An Eel Soup Digression

Because the nav­i­ga­tor did­n’t under­stand that the crease in the map depict­ed a crease in the sea, the ship had to weigh anchor. The cap­tain forced the nav­i­ga­tor to row a dinghy through the line, to reck­on its effects.

Meanwhile, in the gal­ley, the cook was cre­at­ing a bouillabaisse—conger eel, sea robins, fen­nel, cod bones, bou­quet gar­ni, saf­fron, mus­sels, olive oil, gar­lic, white wine, smoke of the after­life, French bread, cayenne pep­per, lit­tle neck clams, toma­to paste, and Thibault, the very lob­ster that was con­duct­ed through the streets of Paris by Gérard de Nerval.

Concurrently, the nav­i­ga­tor was remem­ber­ing a poem about a boy who thought the cres­cent moon was a bro­ken moon and the stars were its pieces. He could smell the soup. At least, he thought, as the water began to churn, I’ll have some­thing good to eat tonight.

~

Peter Jay Shippy is the author of Thieves’ Latin, Alphaville, How to Build the Ghost in Your Attic, and A Spell of Songs. His 5th book, Kaputniks, will be pub­lished by Saturnalia Books in 2021. About A Spell of Songs, John Yau wrote: “One day, not long ago, Meret Oppenheim walked past Edward Hopper in Paris, and an elec­tric cur­rent passed between, and from that cur­rent was born Peter Jay Shippy.…” Shippy has received fel­low­ships in dra­ma and poet­ry from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2002 he won the Iowa Poetry Prize and in 2005 he received a Gertrude Stein award for inno­v­a­tive poet­ry. In 2009 Shippy received the Governor’s Citation for Outstanding Artistic Achievement. He has pub­lished wide­ly, includ­ing The American Poetry Review, The Boston Globe, Iowa Review and Ploughshares. Shippy teach­es lit­er­a­ture and writ­ing at Emerson College in Boston.

My mom just called from the nurs­ing home. She sur­vived anoth­er painful heart episode. She asked me how the peo­ple liked the Italian songs I sang in church. She has asked me this before. I have sung no Italian songs, in church or any­where else. Then she sang a lit­tle bit over the phone. It was love­ly, though her light sopra­no voice is now low and hoarse. I asked her to sing some more. I thought, I need to learn some good Italian songs and sing them in church.

I’ve been read­ing Berrigan’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, as some of you know, the der­ring do of the rad­i­cal Catholic priest who loved America enough to speak the ter­ri­ble truth about America’s addic­tion to vio­lence, racism, and war. And again and again, Berrigan tells of his moth­er, who stead­fast­ly stood by him. “With her, a thou­sand dif­fi­cul­ties did not cre­ate a sin­gle doubt.”

After his broth­er Philip was arrest­ed for throw­ing human blood on draft files in Baltimore, while he him­self was arrest­ed in Washington dur­ing a protest against the war, Daniel called home. His mother’s calm on the phone touched him. He explained things, as best he could. “You mean,” his moth­er respond­ed, “that you are out of jail and your broth­er is in?”

~

Gary Percesepe is the author of eight books, most recent­ly The Winter of J, a poet­ry col­lec­tion pub­lished by Poetry Box. He is Associate Editor at New World Writing. Previously he was an assis­tant fic­tion edi­tor at Antioch Review. His work has appeared in Christian Century, Maine Review, Brevity, Story Quarterly, N + 1, Salon, Mississippi Review, Wigleaf, Westchester Review, PANK, The Millions, Atticus Review, Antioch Review, Solstice, and oth­er places. He resides in White Plains, New York, and teach­es phi­los­o­phy at Fordham University in the Bronx.

I couldn’t see my way clear to make it to the annu­al Gala.  I had RSVPed under self-imposed pres­sure, but I wasn’t above claim­ing a sud­den ill­ness should any­one men­tion my fail­ure to attend.  I’d cleaned myself up in a more fas­tid­i­ous man­ner than usu­al and had stuffed myself into my aging tux, which had over the years man­aged to elude moth­dom.  I’d then gazed with revul­sion in a too-large mir­ror and asked:  “Do I wish to present this per­son as me?”  Who was this alleged per­son?  Not some­one I knew, I was sure of that.  I imag­ined all the buffed-up human beings pack­ing the Gala hall, beam­ing with mer­ri­ment, chest-high drinks abet­ting the façade.  How would I fit in, one who was unable to ban­ish from con­scious­ness my unpol­ished and frag­ment­ed self-image.  I couldn’t arrive in my nat­ur­al state of iden­ti­ty while in tux dis­guise, and I couldn’t tol­er­ate hours of unabat­ed grin­ning by every­one with­in eye­shot.  I had an embar­rass­ing his­to­ry of rude­ness when con­front­ed with repet­i­tive ques­tions or sto­ries from cer­tain annoy­ing peo­ple who seemed to lie in wait for me.  My per­for­mances had the humil­i­at­ing out­come of mak­ing me less bear­able than they were.  Take Trowbridge, who’d some­how caught wind of my prostate trou­ble and had grown exces­sive­ly fond of shar­ing his prostate issues and ask­ing me: “How’s our favorite gland doing?” I didn’t like the unin­tend­ed impli­ca­tion that my prostate could be his favorite gland.  After sev­er­al sim­i­lar encoun­ters I’d asked if he want­ed me to bend over so he could address his favorite gland direct­ly or if he want­ed to make an exam­i­na­tion and reach his own con­clu­sions.  I should have been more sen­si­tive, respect­ing the trau­ma of his prostate surgery and his desire to com­mis­er­ate with me on the decline of one of our most pri­vate parts.  Yet, I did not see it that way and didn’t care to pre­tend that I approved of his out­sized inter­est in my out­sized prostate.  Trowbridge retreat­ed upon hear­ing my heavy-hand­ed mes­sage, and when­ev­er I see him I sense endur­ing dis­tress from my out­burst.  Also sure to be there was Mossland, a man deeply in love with his hunt­ing dogs and full of sto­ries detail­ing how they’d helped him kill great num­bers of ani­mals.  I’d final­ly told Mossland that I envi­sioned a future dog breed that would halt in its tracks and point at flee­ing flocks of hunters so that high­ly evolved apes could more eas­i­ly shoul­der their rifles and pick them off.  He hasn’t come with­in close range of me since, and I sym­pa­thize with his desire to avoid me.  I couldn’t doubt that if I attend­ed the event, numer­ous peo­ple would be unhap­py to see me there, despite my past char­i­ta­ble con­tri­bu­tions.  I thought it best not to inflict myself on oth­ers, con­ve­nient­ly elim­i­nat­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of oth­ers inflict­ing them­selves on me.  By stay­ing home, I was mak­ing a small con­tri­bu­tion to social well-being at the Gala.  I heard it was an unmit­i­gat­ed success.

~

Glen Pourciau’s sec­ond col­lec­tion of sto­ries, View, was pub­lished by Four Way Books. His first sto­ry col­lec­tion, Invite, won the Iowa Short Fiction Award. He’s had sto­ries pub­lished by AGNI Online, The Collagist, Epoch, New England Review, New World Writing, The Paris Review, Post Road,and others.

I sat on the back­stairs, on the top step near the screened kitchen door, wait­ing. I did a lot of wait­ing. For Maud Ellen to come talk, or my grand­moth­er, Mamoo, or Daddy when­ev­er he’d appear, or for our dogs, Wanda and Beebee. Pinning down the dogs was easy; I could pre­tend to be a dog if I had to. I did wait­ing so well I’d turned it into art. But some­times I got bug­gy. Buggy made me feel like I’d burst. And around here burst­ing spelled trou­ble in a bot­tle full of lit­tle white tabs.

Maud Ellen mate­ri­al­ized from the front yard and dropped into Uncle Walter’s chair made of plumb­ing pipes, the same chair my father hanged him­self on. She had a Don Q and her Lark 100s.

“Let’s talk about bats, Mama,” I said, using the inti­mate to snag her atten­tion. I was hap­py she’d come. I had to talk quick. Everybody in my fam­i­ly, except the dogs, liked flight.

“Bats?”

“I like bats.”

“I know noth­ing about bats.”

“Why not?”

“Bats are not some­thing I am inter­est­ed in.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think about them.”

“I do. Bats eat bugs. I don’t like bugs.”

“Yes, I sup­pose they do,” she said, puff­ing on her Lark.

“I bet they eat those cat­fish-sized cock­roach­es like the one fly­ing around the chan­de­lier in the front hall last night. Mamoo was so fun­ny, shriek­ing and flap­ping her arms like she might fly, too, and you bat­ting at the roach like a slug­ger. Would Uncle John real­ly throw us out for break­ing Mummy’s antiques?

Maybe we could trap a bat, bring it inside. Get it a bat house and a swing. Whenever those roach­es come along, we’ll let it loose and watch as it sucks their necks. Or maybe it swal­lows them whole, feet first—the way the French do when they eat those lit­tle birds.”

Maud Ellen stirred the air, and almost blew me off the step. She stamped out her cig­a­rette. “I’m going inside to eat a banana.”

“Don’t you think a bat would eat those bugs?”

“I have no earth­ly idea,” she said.

She prac­ti­cal­ly flew up the steps. I jumped up to let her pass. The screen door slapped its frame. I want­ed to tell her we wouldn’t have to be afraid any­more about bugs and Mamoo pop­ping Phenobarb to calm down. As usu­al, I’d said too much.

In her hur­ry, Maud Ellen left her Larks. I sat back down, tucked my arms around my knees and prac­ticed wait­ing again. This time I’d wait for a sign. The sky was fast dis­ap­pear­ing around the arm of the oak. That’s when I saw it, a queer dark bird with a plas­ter-white face and eyes-as-blue-as-my-blond-head­ed dolls, fly­ing in the yard. The clos­er it came the big­ger it got until it got right up in my face. I opened my mouth. It glid­ed inside. As high as a kite on white tabs, I unfurled.

~

An M.F.A grad­u­ate of Stony Brook University, Lucinda Kempe’s work has been pub­lished or is forth­com­ing in Midway Journal, Bending Genres, The Southampton Review, Elm Leaves Journal, and the Summerset Review. Wigleaf longlist­ed her micro fic­tion (2018 and 2019). Her fic­tion “I Became a Girl” was nom­i­nat­ed for the 2020 Pushcart Prize.

My moth­er acts like the con­flict between her and me is seman­tic, rather than due to her crap­py par­ent­ing. For instance, when I try to talk to her about how when I was a kid and she was pissed at me, or sim­ply found me irri­tat­ing and noisy, she would make me sit in the garage by myself for hours (pitch dark, smelling like ran­cid milk), she says, “It’s ridicu­lous to call that ‘abuse’! I nev­er laid a hand on you. Your gen­er­a­tion is much too loosey-goosey with words.”

Which makes me smile— mad­den­ing as my moth­er is, the way she’ll let fly some phrase like “loosey-goosey,” as if she’s a fifties house­wife in a flow­ered apron, kills me.

So I press her. I want to know what oth­er words she takes umbrage with.

She gives me a look to con­firm that I’m not mess­ing with her (my moth­er and I have min­i­mal trust in each oth­er), and says, “All right, what about gen­der? In my day, gen­der was a con­crete thing that you just were. You all act as if it’s a cos­tume you can just throw on. ‘Today I’m feel­ing like a girl.’ Gender is not some­thing you feel!”

“Says the woman who tells me I ought to make an effort to look more fem­i­nine,” I say. “And what about your birth­day twin?”

My moth­er hates it when I call David Bowie her birth­day twin, though it is true they share the same birthday—same year as well as the same date. I real­ized this only after he died, and weird­ly, this fact prompt­ed me to call her when I heard the news. I took Bowie’s death hard. What my moth­er said: “You didn’t even know the man. It makes no sense to be so sad.”

Impossible to explain to her that as a kid, I felt more seen by David Bowie than I did by my own moth­er. Those long, dark hours in the garage, Bowie was who kept me com­pa­ny. I sang “Life on Mars?” to myself and the crickets.

On the phone that evening, I repeat­ed “sad­den­ing bore” over and over again until my moth­er said, “Finis!”

Now she says, “His songs are nonsense.”

“And what do you mean by nonsense?”

My moth­er looks at me, again to ver­i­fy that I’m not fuck­ing with her, and appar­ent­ly decides instead I’m a moron. She twirls one hand in the air, con­vey­ing dis­missal. “Poppycock. Balderdash,” she says, and again my irri­ta­tion at her dis­solves in the face of her words. The fifties house­wife with the apron morphs into some Victorian lord with a hooked, dis­dain­ful nose and a bur­gundy vel­vet smok­ing jacket.

Sometimes I think my moth­er and I would final­ly get along if, instead of try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate, to explain our­selves to each oth­er, we just sat across a table and occa­sion­al­ly emit­ted sin­gle words: “star­ship,” “per­ni­cious,” “grasshop­per.”

~

Kim Magowan lives in San Francisco and teach­es in the Department of Literatures and Languages at Mills College. Her short sto­ry col­lec­tion Undoing (2018) won the 2017 Moon City Press Fiction Award. Her nov­el The Light Source is forth­com­ing from 7.13 Books this July. Her fic­tion has been pub­lished wide­ly.  She is the Fiction Editor of Pithead Chapel. www.kimmagowan.com

Michelle Ross is the author of There’s So Much They Haven’t Told You (2017), which won the 2016 Moon City Press Short Fiction Award.  Her fic­tion has recent­ly appeared or is forth­com­ing in Alaska Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, Electric Literature, and oth­er venues. She is Fiction Editor of Atticus Review. She lives in Tucson, Arizona.  www.michellenross.com

 

 

=&0=&

A Mariachi walked in the city in the mid­dle of the day. He had a gold trum­pet at his side. His Mariachi suit and som­brero were black with gold embroi­dery and he wore a red bow tie. Every now and then, at red lights, he would play a lit­tle bit of the trum­pet. Sometimes peo­ple would clap. Sometimes they would just stand there in awe.

The Mariachi was on his way to meet his team, but he was late and lost in the city. He called the gui­tarist to ask for directions.

“Where’s this funer­al? I thought you said it was on 17th Street?” the trum­peter asked.

“It’s on 34th St and Lemon. You’ll have to hur­ry because it starts at 1:30,” the gui­tarist said.

“I’ll be there on time!” the trum­peter said.

He hailed a taxi and they sped along to the funer­al. He smoked a cig­a­rette out of the win­dow as they skipped through town like a stone on a lake. The taxi was red, green, and white, like the Mexican flag, so he con­sid­ered it a good sign.

They arrived right on time. The trum­peter walked in the funer­al house play­ing “Un Puño de Tierra.” The son of the woman who was deceased began to sing along with the Mariachis. He closed his eyes most of the time as he sang. He sang well and more impor­tant­ly he hon­ored his mom. When he fin­ished, he gave the Mariachis a big hug and shed a few tears on their shoulders.

The next day the trum­peter received a text mes­sage from the gui­tarist. “We have a change of sched­ule today. We’re no longer per­form­ing at the bap­tism down­town. They can­celed. Instead, we’re going to meet at Nacho’s (the violinist’s house) and watch La Liga MX final. We could use a break, com­pa,” he said.

“Sounds like a plan, com­pa!” the trum­peter replied. The Mariachi put his gold trum­pet back in its sil­ver case and got ready for the game. He was hop­ing for a León victory!

 

=&1=&

A cir­cus per­former smoked a cig­a­rette on his lunch break. He had once been the lion tamer at the same cir­cus, but had been demot­ed to Adjunct Clown. He looked up at the thick clouds as he smoked. Spring is a tease, he thought. His red, blue, and yel­low suit clashed with the grey clouds in the sky.

When he fin­ished smok­ing, he put on his red nose and head­ed back to the cir­cus tent. What will I do today? He thought. Ride a tiny bicy­cle? Balloon tricks? Wrestle an alli­ga­tor? Or gen­er­al deviance? He decid­ed to do bal­loon tricks. First, he made a pig. It was soft, pink, and adorable. The audi­ence clapped. Then he made a giraffe. It was yel­low and had a neck longer than twice its body. More applause. Finally, he made a Tyrannosaurs Rex. It had a giant head, big feet, long tail, and tiny hands. He placed the T‑Rex on the floor and it start­ed to walk and growl. The audi­ence was amazed. They stood on their feet and clapped, loudly.

At mid­night, the clown clocked out and went home. He lived by the ocean where it’s always over­cast and gloomy. He made a green tea as soon as he got home. He sipped the tea as he read the local news­pa­per. In the back of the paper, he saw an ad announc­ing the cir­cus cal­en­dar. He was filled with pride. His jaw dropped as he gawked at the pho­to of the jug­gler, the acro­bat, the lion tamer, and him­self. That’s me! he said. It’s real­ly me! He put the paper on the fridge with a mag­net and went to bed.

The next day, he took the ad to Michael’s and framed it. He hung the frame in his garage where he prac­ticed his cir­cus tricks. He felt accom­plished and sat­is­fied and even decid­ed to quit smok­ing. Maybe I want to stick around for a while, he thought. He threw the box of cig­a­rettes in the trash can and went to work.

 

=&2=&

A man looks out of a win­dow in the mid­dle of the day. No one is around. Only a stray dog and some rose bush­es. The man has the day off from his work at the library. He’s a clerk at a library down­town, but his pas­sion is painting.

His paint­ing style can best be described as a mix­ture of sur­re­al­ism and abstract expres­sion­ism. Since he has the day off, he decides to paint.

What shall I paint? He won­ders. Maybe “The Last Supper,” but post-mod­ern in the city. No, I think I’ve seen that before, he says. Maybe a game of bas­ket­ball at the park by a lake with a turquoise sun­set? Perhaps.

Finally, he decides to paint a self-por­trait. He paints him­self sit­ting by a win­dow, smok­ing a cig­a­rette, with his bull­dog Kafka. The sun is in the cor­ner of the paint­ing and is rep­re­sent­ed by a sun­flower. The man is wear­ing a black-and-white shirt with blue jeans. He holds his bull­dog with one hand. Kafka is wear­ing a pair of sun­glass­es. He titles the paint­ing, “Self-Portrait with Bulldog, Kafka, and Sunglasses.”

When he fin­ish­es the paint­ing, he has some soyri­zo with beans, tor­tillas, and a glass of water. Then he rides his long­board to the Venice Boardwalk and tries to sell the painting.

At first, it’s rather slow and he only receives a cou­ple gen­er­al com­pli­ments. It’s a gor­geous day weath­er-wise, though, so he tries not to sweat it. Eventually, an English teacher approach­es and kind­ly buys the paint­ing for $150. He thanks her, repeat­ed­ly, and then skates back home.

~

=&3=& is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is from Southern California. His work appears in Bat City Review, The Cincinnati Review, Huizache, The Iowa Review, The Nation, The Progressive, Witness, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011. His man­u­script was a final­ist for the 2018 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize.

Sunday din­ner in Columbia, Tennessee: fried chick­en, mixed greens— turnips,
–more

After the Orgy

After the Sunday orgy, the men changed their shirts. The women changed their shoes.

Man #1 swag­gered all week.

Woman #2 com­posed a per­son­al ad: “Needy woman in search of help­less man. Weren’t you at the orgy on Sunday?”

Man #2 won­dered whether to con­tact woman #2 but nev­er got her name.

Woman #3 in her sex edu­ca­tion class announced bright­ly, “For the next two weeks, we’re going to turn the boys into girls and vice ver­sa, then com­pare notes.”

Man #3, rem­i­nisc­ing at least a few times dai­ly, thought the men had been hot­ter than the women.

Woman #2 felt unlove­ly, grow­ing more so by the minute—and signed up for the next orgy.

Man #3 found him­self in love with man #1.

Woman #1 jot­ted down in her old-fash­ioned plan­ner: “Sin at leisure, repent in haste”—and hur­ried to the drugstore.

Man #3 dreamt of the orgy sev­er­al nights run­ning, but with the man’s faces on the women’s bodies.

Woman #2 recon­sid­ered all her orifices.

Woman #1 felt, At this point, all I want is for man #2 to become a haunt­ing memory.

Man #1 remarked sar­cas­ti­cal­ly: “As if sex were an equal-oppor­tu­ni­ty employer.”

Woman #1 put it this way to her friend at a Sunday brunch that was a pal­lid sub­sti­tute for the Sunday before: “I’m not a hope­less roman­tic but a hope­ful one.”

Woman #3 bought a poster-sized chart of penis sizes.

Woman #1 start­ed to write a short sto­ry about the expe­ri­ence but got bogged down in the first action sequence.

Man #2 wrote a poem about the expe­ri­ence, con­tain­ing the line “shud­der­ing loins.”

Woman #2 began siz­ing up every man she encoun­tered, includ­ing the ugly ones. Especially the ugly ones.

Man #1 decid­ed to start an orgy agency.

Woman #3 thought about the one prob­lem with a five-hour orgy and began a cater­ing start-up.

Man #1 changed not a whit.

Woman #1 nev­er told her husband.

Man #2 ill-advis­ed­ly post­ed pho­tos on Instagram.

Man #1 boast­ed to his wife.

Woman #3 rec­og­nized one of the par­tic­i­pants on the street the oth­er day and winked.

–

Bird Feeder

One day I woke up to find I’d been mar­ried for twen­ty years with two kids in high school. Bob sat at the yel­low break­fast nook, gaz­ing at the eter­nal squir­rels gang­ing up on the bird feed­er in our back yard. Look at that one with the clumpy tail. He point­ed at a deter­mined squir­rel cap­siz­ing the bird feed­er tray for access to the silo of seed inside. An irate blue jay cheat‑cheated overhead.

I was about to reply when our two daugh­ters Cindy and Mindy entered the kitchen. Since it was Saturday, they weren’t hur­ry­ing to school but were bored already at 8:00 a.m. It’s a love­ly June day, I told them. Take advan­tage of it while you can.

As for me, the decades had flown over to the bird feed­er, where the clump‑tailed squir­rel was gorg­ing him­self on sun­flower seeds. I was a psych major at Penn State, then an office temp till I met Bob the sales man­ag­er at Sears, lead­ing to our wed­ding at the Orange Chapel, after which Cindy was born, then Mindy. I worked flex time at an insur­ance office, arranged for babysit­ters, packed a thou­sand PB&J sand­wich­es for school lunch­es, drove to two dif­fer­ent soc­cer prac­tices, and lay in bed next to Bob night after year.

But none of that is true. I’m only sev­en­teen, and I have all those years ahead of me. I have the time to make mis­takes and cor­rect some of them. My mom calls out from the hall­way that it’s shap­ing up to be a splen­did morn­ing and that I should take advan­tage of the fine weath­er by going out­side. I look out the win­dow to see that the squir­rel has made off with all the seed he can take, and still the sup­ply spills out.

–

Second Act

Ignazio was sup­posed to feed the ele­phants that after­noon, but he want­ed to fin­ish his math home­work first. His father was a clown at the Rolldale Circus, his moth­er an acro­bat. “You have way cool par­ents, Iggy,” a boy from the audi­ence told him. They’d met dur­ing an inter­mis­sion and chat­ted. The kid’s name was Edward. His father was a lawyer, his moth­er stayed at home, and they lived in a ranch house with a dog named Rex.

But Ignazio wished his father didn’t put on an orange wig for work, and he wor­ried about his moth­er tum­bling off the high-wire. The scent of stale pop­corn always hung in his nos­trils. To earn his allowance at age twelve, he turned into Rex the Dog Boy, with a snap-on tail, claws, pointy ears, whiskers, and fur patch­es. For the marks, he’d bark, scratch his ears with his toes, and shove his face into a bowl of raw meat. In his dreams, he sat in a fam­i­ly den and watched TV sitcoms.

At eigh­teen, he ran away from the car­a­van to enroll in col­lege. After grad­u­a­tion, he count­ed twen­ties as a bank teller while he earned his cer­ti­fi­ca­tion as a CPA. He mar­ried a tax attor­ney and moved to the sub­urbs, where their son, Ed, was born. Ig keeps reg­u­lar hours and likes his steak well done.

But he’s will­ing to clown around for his son. He has a baby trapeze in the garage, sent by a pair of dot­ing grand­par­ents. And every once in a while, he freaks out the neigh­bors by get­ting down on all fours and howl­ing at the moon.

Ed, now age five, watch­es from the porch until his moth­er calls him indoors.

~

David Galef has pub­lished over a dozen books, includ­ing the nov­els Flesh, Turning Japanese, and How to Cope with Suburban Stress (a Book Sense choice, list­ed by Kirkus as one of the Best 30 Books of 2006); the short-sto­ry col­lec­tions Laugh Track and My Date with Neanderthal Woman (win­ner of Dzanc Books’ Short Story Collection Award); two children’s books, The Little Red Bicycle by Random House and Tracks by William Morrow Junior; a co-edit­ed anthol­o­gy of fic­tion called 20 over 40 (University Press of Mississippi); the poet­ry col­lec­tion Flaws and Kanji Poems (David Roberts Books); the trans­la­tion Japanese Proverbs: Wit and Wisdom (Tuttle); and lit­er­ary crit­i­cism: The Supporting Cast (Penn State Press). His lat­est vol­ume is Brevity: A Flash Fiction Handbook (Columbia University Press). Most recent­ly he won the ALSCW Meringoff Award for short fic­tion and place­ment in the top 50 very short fic­tions of 2017 from Wigleaf. His web­site is www.davidgalef.com, his Twitter han­dle @dgalef. He’s a pro­fes­sor of English and the cre­ative writ­ing pro­gram direc­tor at Montclair State University.

The dolls were drink­ing Jack Daniels and hav­ing an argu­ment. The moth­er doll said she was through with the father doll and had rent­ed a room in anoth­er doll­house. This room was freez­ing cold, with torn pink cur­tains; but the doll­house had wit­ty occupants.

Who are these peo­ple any­way? said the father doll.

I don’t know their names yet.

What about your crea­ture comforts?

I have every­thing I need there.

The father doll got out a note­book, looked at fig­ures, and said he wouldn’t send her any mon­ey if she left.

You’ll be out on the streets in no time.

I don’t need your mon­ey, said the moth­er doll. I got a job as a fur­ni­ture buyer.

A fur­ni­ture buy­er? Be care­ful you don’t con­fuse nov­el­ty with change.

I don’t. I learned the hard way by watch­ing you.

A new roof isn’t a novelty.

I went back to the kitchen and poured a glass of wine.  From the win­dow, I saw my hus­band and our dog, mak­ing their way through the snow.  Soon they came in, fill­ing the house with cold, and I told my hus­band the dolls had been drink­ing Jack Daniels and arguing.

Do you think they have a drink­ing prob­lem? he said.

They just try to copy our lives, but they nev­er get any­thing right, I said. So no, I don’t think so. You’d nev­er say crea­ture com­forts, for example.

My hus­band pat­ted the dog and gave him a biscuit.

Seven peo­ple stopped to talk to him, he said. And some­one waved from a window.

He’s a good dog, I said.

More than good.  He’s the star of the neighborhood.

When my hus­band said good­night, I went back to the doll­house. The dolls had lit can­dles and were in their four-poster bed, twined in each other’s arms. The sheets were tan­gled in love-knot and Stevie Wonder was singing You and I. When they saw me they made the cov­ers into a tent and dove inside. I poured more wine and raised my glass to them.

~

Thaisa Frank has pub­lished five books of fic­tion, most recent­ly Heidegger’s Glasses (a nov­el, Counterpoint 2010, 2011) and Enchantment (short sto­ries, Counterpoint 2012). Recent pub­li­ca­tions includ­ed work in New Micro (Norton, 2018) and Bloomsbury (2019). She lives in Northern California and is a mem­ber of The Writers Grotto.

Our Struggle: On the Experience of Reading Karl Ove Knaussgaard

I read Book One of Karl Ove Knausgaard epic nov­el My Struggle in 2014, and was instant­ly hooked. In sub­se­quent years I read books two through five, and wait­ed for the English trans­la­tion of Book Six to appear. I got my copy in late 2018, and took it to Switzerland with me, where I read it over the Christmas Break and into the new year. At 1157 pages, read­ing Book Six seemed an epic chal­lenge; the six vol­umes com­bined total over 3,600 pages. Not quite Proust, but in the ter­ri­to­ry. Reading is a soli­tary act. When I final­ly fin­ished read­ing Book Six, five years after I had begun, I longed for some­one to talk to about the expe­ri­ence. Luckily, my friend Roxana Robinson had fin­ished read­ing Book Six around the same time as me. Roxana is a won­der­ful writer. Her new nov­el, Dawson’s Fall, imag­ines the lives of her great-grand­par­ents in an unre­pen­tant South two decades after the end of the Civil War.

 

GP: Roxana, one week out, what is your take­away from the expe­ri­ence of read­ing My Struggle? 

RR: Hmm – I think that ques­tion is too big. The thing about the work is that it tries to encom­pass every­thing, so it’s daunt­ing to try to respond in a way that also encom­pass­es every­thing. Can we choose a nar­row­er approach?

 

GP: Last week on Facebook you wrote that you were com­plete­ly engaged by the nar­ra­tive, the char­ac­ters, and the author’s inten­tion, which you under­stand as, “the strug­gle to inte­grate the inner life and the out­er life, the intan­gi­ble and the real, in a way that deliv­ers the total­i­ty of lived expe­ri­ence.”  You illus­trat­ed your mean­ing by describ­ing what almost every­one who com­ments on My Struggle has observed–its relent­less and obses­sive atten­tion to the details of aver­age ordi­nary life, page after page of doing the laun­dry, get­ting the kids to school, mak­ing din­ner. Why does the quo­tid­i­an fas­ci­nate us so much, and how does gen­der enter into this? If a woman writer spent this amount of time and effort describ­ing going down to the base­ment to do the laun­dry or prepar­ing din­ner in the kitchen, would the read­ing pub­lic be as inter­est­ed, do you think? Would we be describ­ing it, as you did in your post, as, “huge­ly authen­tic, dri­ven, deter­mined, brave and com­pas­sion­ate?” Meg Wolitzer gave voice to this line of crit­i­cism a few years back in a much-dis­cussed arti­cle in the New York Times titled, “The Second Shelf: On the Rules of Literary Fiction for Men and Women.”  If My Struggle had been writ­ten by a woman and had piles of laun­dry on the cov­er, would it have been rel­e­gat­ed to what Wolitzer calls “Women’s Fiction”—“that close-quar­tered low­er shelf where books empha­siz­ing rela­tion­ships and the inte­ri­or lives of women are often rel­e­gat­ed?” Is it the excur­sions into philo­soph­i­cal the­o­ry and lit­er­ary crit­i­cism that shield Knausgaard from this fate, and is this what you mean by the “inte­gra­tion of the inner and out­er life?”

RR: I think My Struggle is the chron­i­cle of Knausgaard’s effort to inte­grate the two anti­thet­i­cal parts of his life, the inte­ri­or and the exte­ri­or. He shows us what each is like, giv­ing even-hand­ed atten­tion to the world of the body and the world of the mind. He offers detailed descrip­tions of the phys­i­cal life, telling us just how the rain hits the win­dow, just how the laun­dry room looks and smells. These descrip­tions offer an odd mix of inti­ma­cy and dis­tance: the author’s deep atten­tive­ness to quo­tid­i­an facts gives them val­ue, and they sug­gest a kind of ten­der aware­ness of the way our lives are spent. We might feel a sense of recog­ni­tion, a shared aware­ness of our human con­nec­tion. Yet Knausgaard’s tone is lev­el and detached, imper­son­al. It denies inti­ma­cy. Rarely does he tell us how he feels about the room, or the land­scape, or the weather.

He’s up to some­thing besides an easy col­le­gial­i­ty. He imbues this mun­dane infor­ma­tion with impor­tance, not only through his atten­tive­ness but also through his lit­er­ary style. The pre­ci­sion of his detail, and the slow, con­trolled, mea­sured pace of the nar­ra­tive is famil­iar from detec­tive sto­ries and thrillers, to say noth­ing of Henry James. The delib­er­ate slow­ness and the care­ful focus cre­ate a kind of sus­pense. Why is he ascrib­ing such impor­tance to this scene, these details? We exam­ine them for clues. We expect a mur­der, or a love sto­ry, though, con­fus­ing­ly, we don’t get either. Knausgaard is doing some­thing different.

In the ear­ly scenes, as he describes the process of clean­ing his grand­par­ents’ house at the begin­ning of the series, he deliv­ers infor­ma­tion in a neu­tral tone. The appalling con­di­tions of the rooms, the filth and dis­or­der, the emp­ty bot­tles and ruined fur­ni­ture, are all described with­out emo­tion or expla­na­tion. The actu­al­i­ty of this rav­aged world bears down on us through our own absorp­tion of its phys­i­cal pres­ence. He doesn’t tell us what the bot­tles and the filth mean, or how they might affect him. We come to under­stand that through our read­ing of these phys­i­cal clues. The con­trolled slow­ness of the pace, the metic­u­lous obser­va­tion of detail deliv­er a dev­as­tat­ing message.

What Knausgaard is doing seems new to me, in his com­mit­ment to giv­ing equal val­ue to the two halves of our lives. Many writ­ers have cho­sen one of these halves, but few who insist on their absolute entwin­ing. Those who focus on the phys­i­cal and the mun­dane rarely focus on the intel­lec­tu­al side, and vice ver­sa. The intel­lec­tu­als have rarely shown such inter­est in the life of phys­i­cal details.

Writing itself has its own eso­teric tra­di­tion: the ear­li­est writ­ers were few, and they used their skill on only the most sig­nif­i­cant sub­jects: the spir­i­tu­al life, God, the soul. Those ear­ly sub­jects were those that were the most holy, the most abstract, the most intel­lec­tu­al. The most sep­a­rate from the body. As lit­er­a­cy became more wide­spread, sub­ject mat­ter became more diverse. Nowadays you can write about any­thing – but we’re still aware of a hier­ar­chy of sub­jects. We know that the intel­lec­tu­al is the most ele­vat­ed sphere of inter­est. We give that more respect than the phys­i­cal – but, inter­est­ing­ly, Knausgaard does not. He gives equal atten­tion to those hours in which we are sim­ply doing chores and tend­ing to our bod­ies that he does to his obser­va­tions on Heidegger, or on read­ing the diaries of a Polish poet. Knausgaard demands that we acknowl­edge that the life of the body is as sig­nif­i­cant and as pro­found as the life of the mind. He denies the idea of hier­ar­chy. He demands that we accept all parts of our lives as equals. He insists on a kind of whole­ness, he declares that there is a great rich­ness to expe­ri­ence that can only be absorbed in its entirety.

It’s this inte­gra­tion that I find so inter­est­ing, because most oth­er writ­ers choose one part or the oth­er. As to gen­der — many women writ­ers have focused on the phys­i­cal aspects of their domes­tic lives – gro­ceries, laun­dry – but most of them imbue these descrip­tions with feel­ings. Knausgaard refus­es to do this. And not many women writ­ers have inte­grat­ed the quo­tid­i­an life with such an exi­gent and pro­found intel­lec­tu­al life. These are gen­er­al­iza­tions, and I don’t mean that women writ­ers don’t write about the intel­lec­tu­al life, of course they do. Many have writ­ten with ener­gy and bril­liance about the intel­lec­tu­al life – but from either gen­der I think it’s rare to find Knausgaard’s inte­gra­tion of the two. The con­join­ing is both con­fus­ing and exhilarating.

 

GP: I’m also curi­ous what you think about Knausgaard writ­ing My Struggle as a nov­el rather than a mem­oir, which he seems to regard as a “weak form.” If he wrote it as a nov­el in order to avoid hav­ing to deal with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of giv­ing offense to real peo­ple in his life (a con­stant source of ten­sion for mem­oir writ­ers), he sure­ly didn’t suc­ceed. Holy hell broke out in his fam­i­ly, with his uncle threat­en­ing to sue and expose him as a liar, and his wife Linda crushed when she learns, in read­ing the book, that her hus­band had been unfaith­ful to her. Calamity ensues.

RR: I think he means that a mem­oir is held hostage to mem­o­ry, and to the mem­o­ries of oth­er peo­ple, and a nov­el is entire­ly under the con­trol of the writer. In the last book of My Struggle, he wres­tles with the chaos he has cre­at­ed through his ear­ly can­dor, or utter lack of con­sid­er­a­tion. But part of the pur­pose of the book is his need to set­tle for him­self the ques­tion of his rela­tion­ship to his father. He can’t do that if he is bound by the rules of cour­tesy or con­sid­er­a­tion – it requires a great can­did reck­on­ing, hon­esty and exac­ti­tude. I was enthralled by his long dis­qui­si­tion on the idea of the name, on what it means to have one, what it sig­ni­fies to be called by one, how, before names, there was noth­ing, how names call things into being. And I real­ized that before that final book we had nev­er known his father’s name. He was called Dad. Then I under­stood that it must have been with­held at the request of his uncle, who had chal­lenged every­thing about Knausgaard’s ini­tial book, his own mem­o­ry of and rela­tion­ship to his own father. Knausgaard ques­tioned these things him­self, won­der­ing if he had com­mit­ted some kind of fraud, or mock­ery, or attack, which is some­thing all writ­ers who draw on their own lives for mate­r­i­al must expe­ri­ence. But now, final­ly, at the end of this great exam­i­na­tion of his own inner and out­er lives, and his own reck­on­ing with his father, Knausgaard comes to the place in which he choos­es at last to claim his sto­ry, believe in him­self, reaf­firm his own under­stand­ing of his place in the world and use that name. It is like a great chord being played, echo­ing through the land­scape, fol­lowed by silence.

 

GP: It’s unclear to me how an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal nov­el is any less hostage to mem­o­ry than a mem­oir. Both engage in the dialec­tic of nar­ra­tive and time; both are pre­oc­cu­pied with a hermeneu­tic of the self; both are sub­ject to what Ricoeur calls “the hermeneu­tics of sus­pi­cion.” Both are like­ly to get you in trou­ble with loved ones, rel­a­tives, and friends when you elect to write about them, no mat­ter how well you try to mask it. Knausgaard’s wife, Linda (they are now divorced) said of him, “I mar­ried the world’s most indis­crete man.”

RR: But none of those things is about being hostage to mem­o­ry. The premise of a mem­oir is that it is true; a nov­el is shaped and cre­at­ed by the writer; s/he is in charge of the “facts” in it. Whether or not you get in trou­ble with your friends and fam­i­ly is anoth­er mat­ter. It can hap­pen with either. My point is that the writer has more auton­o­my in the nov­el. (And it’s dis­creet, not dis­crete. He is not at all discrete!)

 

GP: What do you take to be the strug­gle in My Struggle? And speak­ing of names, why do you think Knausgaard set­tled on the noto­ri­ous­ly mimet­ic title (Min Kamp in Norwegian)? He tells us else­where that he orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed to title the nov­el The Dog—a self-ref­er­en­tial mock­ing of his canine ten­den­cy to always try to please.

RR: As I said ear­li­er, I think the strug­gle is his attempt to inte­grate the inte­ri­or and the exte­ri­or life. As to the title, he feels some deep con­nec­tion to Hitler’s book, as he shows in the long pas­sages about it. I was fas­ci­nat­ed to learn that it’s banned in Norway. It rais­es the para­dox­i­cal nature of cen­sor­ship, how ban­ning some­thing – as the Nazi Party has been banned in Germany, and hate speech has been banned here – a soci­ety demon­strates its most force­ful beliefs about harm­ful ideas and words. What about Charlie Hebdo’s dis­gust­ing car­toons show­ing the Prophet with a baguette stuck into his pos­te­ri­or? Is that hate speech? It is cer­tain­ly con­tempt-speech, and why wouldn’t it arouse fury on the part of believ­ers? So, ban­ning Mein Kampfby Norway would show how grave­ly the coun­try took the threat of Nazism, and why not? But it would also con­fer on the book the thrilling fas­ci­na­tion of the for­bid­den. Both those things, I think, play a part in Knausgaard’s response to it.

 

GP: You men­tioned Heidegger ear­li­er. In the Facebook that I men­tioned ear­li­er, you revealed that you skipped this sec­tion? Why is that? Is it because you find Heidegger appalling, giv­en his sup­port for Hitler (he nev­er dis­avowed it, until his dying day)? In the four hun­dred-page excur­sus into Hitler, there are whole sec­tions of Mein Kamph quot­ed ver­ba­tim. Is read­ing Heidegger some­how worse than read­ing Hitler?

RR: I skipped the Heidegger sec­tion because I’m not inter­est­ed in phi­los­o­phy. I know this reveals a woe­ful lack of intel­lect, but I find it exas­per­at­ing. It’s entire­ly the­o­ret­i­cal and abstract. It doesn’t allow for emo­tion­al engage­ment, and though I’m sure it has mer­it, it’s some­thing I enjoy exploring.

 

GP: I’m tempt­ed to ask whether you’ve read the dia­logues of Plato, then, which are full of whim­sy and word­play, poet­ic as much as philosophical—or Kierkegaard, or Nietzsche. Knausgaard him­self has writ­ten of the many ways he has been influ­enced by the philoso­phers he stud­ied in the 1980s; he names Foucault as a deep influ­ence, Derrida, Deleuze. But what I real­ly want to ask is whether you’ve seen the movie “The Bookshop,” with the delight­ful Emily Mortimer in the role of a wid­ow, Florence Green, who upon the death of her hus­band decides to open a book­store, despite local oppo­si­tion. The movie opens with a friend of Florence Green, remem­ber­ing her: “She told me once, when we read a sto­ry, we inhab­it it. The cov­ers of the book are like a roof and four walls. A house. She, more than any­thing else in the world loved the moment when we fin­ish the book, and the sto­ry keeps play­ing like the most vivid dream your head. And after that she loved tak­ing long walks, to clear her mind of all the emo­tions and feel­ings the book had start­ed with­in her.” So, I am won­der­ing, has any of this hap­pened to you with My Struggle? Is this nov­el like­ly to play inside your head for years to come? Or maybe I should ask, was this a house that was built for you that you will miss inhabiting?

RR: (laugh­ing) I know I should read Plato and Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. It’s not that I think they are dull or unimag­i­na­tive or val­ue­less. I’m sure they’re full of clev­er­ness, and whim­sy, word­play and brains. It’s just that they don’t tell a human sto­ry, a nar­ra­tive about peo­ple who engage with each oth­er. Philosophy is all the­o­ry and no emo­tion­al engage­ment. And it’s emo­tion that evokes com­pas­sion, not intel­lec­tu­al the­o­ry, no mat­ter how thought­ful or pro­found. So, while I know I should read it, I keep putting it off, as we all do when we are giv­en two choic­es: one of doing some­thing you want to do right now, and the oth­er of doing some­thing you want to do later.

As to “The Bookshop,” I have seen it (and read the book). I like her response, but mine is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. Rather than the moment when the book ends, when I can think about it, I pre­fer the time halfway or two-thirds of the way through, when I am com­plete­ly absorbed by the text, and rel­ish the fact that I still have more time with it ahead. If I real­ly love a book, when it ends I am bereft. I walk around yearn­ing to con­tin­ue liv­ing with the char­ac­ters, miss­ing them and their hous­es and land­scapes and chil­dren and anx­i­eties and prin­ci­ples and loves. Once I went to Sicily with my hus­band. I had tried twice before to read “The Leopard,” but each time I had been unable to get past chap­ter two. For some rea­son it seemed dull and old and stagey. But this time I read it in the land­scape of the nov­el. We drove up into the hills, and I looked over the fields and thought of the Leopard’s fam­i­ly hold­ings. We went through church­es and cathe­drals and I thought of their fam­i­ly mass­es, and of the old aunts and their pathet­ic col­lec­tion of holy relics. We end­ed our trip in the great fad­ed hotel in Palermo, which he describes in the book. I fin­ished it at break­fast, in our room, with its high ceil­ings and ter­raz­zo floors, the cracked plas­ter walls, the tall win­dows, the Sicilian morn­ing out­side. When I fin­ished the book I was shat­tered at los­ing that world. It was ter­ri­ble to close the cov­er on it. When I did I turned it over and opened it again to page one, and I read the whole book through all over again.

So, no, fin­ish­ing a book is not my favorite moment.

But, yes, I absolute­ly lived inside My Struggle. I so admired the way Knausgaard gave us his days, moment by moment, and I rev­eled at being able to plunge into his life. I stayed there for hours and hours at a time. I loved all of these books, most­ly for the way he told the fam­i­ly sto­ry. I admired him for telling this sto­ry, which was so com­pli­cat­ed, and so dan­ger­ous for him to tell. By this I mean that his rela­tion­ship with his father was a fright­en­ing one, and it would be hard to set it down. I admired his account of his mar­riage, and his rela­tion­ship with Linda. There is some­thing I find very mov­ing about his deter­mi­na­tion to set down the truth, in all its banal­i­ty, its par­tic­u­lar­i­ty, its shame­ful­ness and courage. And then I am a big fan of big, expan­sive books. I love Buddenbrooks, and Return of the Native, and Anna Karenina. The Leopard. I’m also an insom­ni­ac, so the big book is my friend. I’ve just start­ed re-read­ing A Dance to the Music of Time.

 

GP: One of the things I first noticed about you in your Facebook posts (which is how I came to know you, vir­tu­al­ly, before we met in per­son in Manhattan) was that you teach a course that focus­es on the theme of com­pas­sion in the nov­el. The course, which I believe you teach on a reg­u­lar basis, fea­tures two of my favorite nov­els, Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary. I want to ask: Do you find My Struggle to be a nov­el filled with com­pas­sion, and Knausgaard a com­pas­sion­ate writer? And why is com­pas­sion an impor­tant trait in a nov­el, or a writer?

RR:  I’ve writ­ten a lot about com­pas­sion, and why I think it’s essen­tial to the great nov­el, so I won’t expand on it much here, except to say that it’s the por­tal through which we enter into anoth­er person’s life, his heart, his soul.

And yes, do I find Knausgaard com­pas­sion­ate. He is scrupu­lous in his ren­der­ing of oth­er peo­ple, both gen­er­ous and pre­cise, and he is uncom­pro­mis­ing in his ren­der­ings of him­self. He tells his worst char­ac­ter­is­tics and reveals his worst flaws qui­et­ly, as though in con­fes­sion – with­out boast­ing, with­out self-indul­gence, and dri­ven by a sense of oblig­a­tion to the truth. It is this can­dor that evokes the reader’s com­pas­sion. And because he doesn’t spare him­self, and because he loves oth­er peo­ple – his moth­er, his broth­er, even his father – we enter into the inti­mate space of his heart, that place reserved for emo­tion­al con­nec­tion. He evokes our com­pas­sion through his stead­fast nar­ra­tion of his own mis­takes, his seri­ous errors and shame­ful cru­el­ties, as well as through his good inten­tions as a son, broth­er, boyfriend and father. He is close­ly bond­ed to this small cir­cle of peo­ple, he is com­mit­ted to cre­at­ing the strongest kinds of link to them. He bun­gles the attempt over and over, then strug­gles on again. Which is the point, and has always been the point of a nov­el: it’s the strug­gle onward, ever since Pilgrim’s Progress, or Ulysses. Because Knausgaard almost does away with the idea of plot, he can focus on the strug­gle. Which means we can see our own lives in his nar­ra­tive – the shape­less­ness of each day, the way it is made up of one thing after anoth­er, iron­ing the table­cloth, chang­ing the nap­pies, watch­ing the cars and peo­ple on the street. I find his atten­tion to the diur­nal utter­ly fas­ci­nat­ing. As Updike says of him­self, he is “giv­ing the mun­dane its beau­ti­ful due.” The mun­dane is where we spend our lives, and, instead of ris­ing to the high roman­tic crags of hero­ism, Knausgaard faces each unre­lent­ing moment of the day. It’s that uncom­pro­mis­ing gaze that I find so com­pelling, the expo­sure he is will­ing to make of him­self, and of how life real­ly is.

~

Roxana Robinson is the author of ten books — six nov­els, three col­lec­tions of short sto­ries, and the biog­ra­phy of Georgia O’Keeffe. Four of these were cho­sen as New York Times Notable Books, two as New York Times Editors’ Choices.

Her fic­tion has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Best American Short Stories, Tin House   and else­where. Her work has been wide­ly anthol­o­gized and broad­cast on NPR. Her books have been pub­lished in England, France, Germany, Holland and Spain. Robinson is a schol­ar of American paint­ings and an envi­ron­men­tal­ist, and her essays, crit­i­cism and Op-Eds have appeared in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Chicago Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post, Bookforum, The Nation and else­where. She has twice been a final­ist for the Balakian Award for Criticism from the NBCC.

Her nov­el, Cost, won the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance Fiction Award for 2008, and it was list­ed as one of the Best Books of the Year by the Chicago Tribune, Library Journal, The Seattle Times and The Wall Street Journal.It was named one of the Five Best Fiction Books of the Year by The Washington Post.

Her novel,Sparta, won the Maine Fiction Award, the James Webb Award from the USMCHF, was named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by the BBC, and was short-list­ed for the Dublin Impac Award.

Roxana Robinson has received fel­low­ships from the NEA, the MacDowell Colony and the Guggenheim Foundation, and she was named a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library. Robinson has served on the Boards of PEN and the Authors Guild, and was the pres­i­dent of the Authors Guild from 2013–2017. In 2019 she received the Barnes and Noble “Writers for Writers Award,” giv­en by Poets and Writers.

 

Gary Percesepe is the author of eight books, most recent­ly The Winter of J, a poet­ry col­lec­tion pub­lished by Poetry Box. He is Associate Editor at New World Writing. Previously he was an assis­tant fic­tion edi­tor at Antioch Review. His work has appeared in Christian Century, Maine Review, Brevity, Story Quarterly, N + 1, Salon, Mississippi Review, Wigleaf, Westchester Review, PANK, The Millions, Atticus Review, Antioch Review, Solstice, and oth­er places. He resides in White Plains, New York, and teach­es phi­los­o­phy at Fordham University in the Bronx.