Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing to be so little reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and fairly judge them. — Rainer Maria Rilke
“It’s like that in families that split, no passing the core stories from hand to hand, agreeing on the shape of them, the size.”
In our current issue, Alissa York tests her memories. You can read “In Memoriam Pompeius Maximus” . . .
“Why are we going to this place anyway?” Elijah asked, looking up again from a busy page of brilliantine sunbirds. What was I supposed to say? Was I supposed to say we were heading to a stone on the edge . . .
When it came to unwanted litters, Farmer Minz favoured death by shovel—one well-aimed blow per altricial skull. He was stooped over the last puppy in line when we entered the daytime twilight of the barn.
“Wait!” my father shouted.
Minz . . .
Travel’s true luxury is the name of the destination. On the ferry from Dakar to the Île de Gorée, the cold was sudden and oceanic, but I could at least pretend I knew where I was headed.
My son, Elijah, . . .
Maggie Nelson’s Bluets takes aim at one of today’s most beloved forms of writing—the autobiography—coyly challenging the genre’s attachment to truthful stories of the self and the form thought best to convey them: that of the realist novel. To hear . . .