Translated by Lydia Davis When he starts telling stories, people gradually leave the table or turn away and talk about something else, and generally I’m the one who then has the bad luck to be obliged to listen to him. Someone must listen to him, after all, and he is a friendly man and a…
Translated by Lydia Davis Egon is no longer with us, we have buried him—we, a little band of people. Egon was my friend, and he was my reader. I knew him a long time and really from a distance, one of many in the bar, and he burdened people with tricky questions, he could really…
On the plastic monthly calendar stuck to the refrigerator, Michelle hadn’t bothered to write the dates in the little boxes. Monday was Monday, Tuesday was Tuesday. The dates didn’t matter. Desmond’s routine filled the days: school=red dots, occupational therapy=orange dots, water therapy=green dots, speech therapy=yellow and brown checked dots. The stickers formed a lively zigzag…
We were driving back from a weekend away at a friend’s house in Normandy when I thought I saw my father—his pebbly gray ashes indisputably scattered and sunk in the icy Atlantic ten long winters before—now alive and well, a passenger in a neighboring coupe. “Dad,” I whispered in astonishment, like a little extra exhalation…
First, some disclaimers: I know what you’re thinking. Where does Sasha Porter, otherwise known as the Family Pariah, get off thinking she can pull it together long enough to tell you a story? That it should be my sister, Zora the Great, telling this story. Zora, the writer; Zora, Daddy’s favorite. Yes, that Zora. But,…
We three brothers spent the afternoon outside in the haze and half rain. We trekked the empty field out behind the decommissioned paper mill where our father used to work and we were fallen upon by ashes from Mount St. Helens, which had erupted three days ago, and once more two days after. Though the…
I’m surviving, Walter said. There was sun and those small birds that Rome is full of in March. There were daisies coming up in the grass and a line of olives and Walter Meltort, the art historian, was on the phone to New York. We’ve finished the morning round of papers. We’ve had lunch. Now…
People called his music inspired and wicked. They said the man was gifted with crazy guitar fingers that could make you weep one moment and get you shouting hot damn the next. His first manager used to brag to any ear that would listen: Take your girl to hear him, Kreuter will get you laid—and…
Tuesday I’m trying to figure out if you can have two thoughts at once. I mean really think about two things simultaneously, not like be hungry and do math at the same time, which is what I was doing when I originally started wondering in the first place. Focus is my Achilles’ heel. Eric figured…
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