June 5, 2013 Arts & Culture The Town of Books By Sadie Stein Hay-on-Wye, Wales, has a population of 1,500 and thirty secondhand bookstores. Since the 1960s, the town has taken in discarded tomes from across the anglophone world, and is known as “the town of books.” Appropriately enough, it’s also home to the annual Hay Festival, described by USA Today as “a geographically remote, bohemian version of the World Economic Forum’s Davos event.” Kindles, needless to say, are frowned upon.
June 5, 2013 Fiction 2 Stories of God: 62 and 70 By Joy Williams Competition at the West End Fair Demolition Derby, Gilbert, Pennsylvania. This week, we will be running a series of pieces from Joy Williams’s 99 Stories of God. First published in The Paris Review in 1968, Joy Williams has since appeared in our pages many times. 99 Stories of God is her first book of fiction in nearly a decade and was written, she has said, partly in an attempt to imitate the inimitable Thomas Bernhard, that “cranky genius of Austrian literature,” and his The Voice Imitator: 104 Stories. 62 The Lord was trying out some material. I AM WHO I AM, He said. It didn’t sound right. THAT’S WHO I AM. I AM. It sounded ridiculous. Read More
June 5, 2013 On the Shelf Story Stamps, and Other News By Sadie Stein This Irish stamp features a 224-word short story. For those who want more sci with their fi: a new anthology, Kepler’s Dozen, collects short science fiction about real planets discovered by Kepler Spacecraft. Edited by scientists from Kepler! Great literature may improve us as human beings … … but! “It is not sufficient to become learned to have read much, if we read without reflection.” RIP really long German word, coined in 1999 in reference to the packaging of beef. Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz, we hardly knew ya.
June 4, 2013 On Politics My Day in Istanbul: A Tear-Gas Tourist’s Notes By Barry Yourgrau Taksim Square and Gezi Park had been triumphantly peaceful since the weekend. But there’d been heavy action overnight in the nearby Beşiktaş and Dolmabahçe neighborhoods. Monday morning I left our apartment on the slope just below Taksim and walked down to Kabataş to get a glimpse of the damage. Kabataş lies right beneath on the Bosphorus; Dolmabahçe and then Beşiktaş are directly north from there along the shore. To our south rise the headland of old Constantinople, the minarets of Aya Sofya, and Blue Mosque. At Kabataş I started up the shore road. It’s always jammed. But northward now, an almost inert standstill. There was debris from some of last night’s blockades, brilliant in the sunshine. Read More
June 4, 2013 Video & Multimedia The Smiths, Sort of, Do Charles Dickens, Sort Of By Sadie Stein Herewith, Charles Dickens crossed with Morrissey, for kids. Look, just watch it.
June 4, 2013 Fiction 2 Stories of God: 13 and 50 By Joy Williams This week, we will be running a series of pieces from Joy Williams’s 99 Stories of God. First published in The Paris Review in 1968, Joy Williams has since appeared in our pages many times. 99 Stories of God is her first book of fiction in nearly a decade and was written, she has said, partly in an attempt to imitate the inimitable Thomas Bernhard, that “cranky genius of Austrian literature,” and his The Voice Imitator: 104 Stories. 13 It was May and in the garden they were drinking mango margaritas. Martha and Constance were discussing throwing an Anti–Mother’s Day party. Martha says that in the movie A.I., there are seven words Monica uses to imprint the boy David. They are: Cirrus. Socrates. Particle. Decibel. Hurricane. Dolphin. Tulip. She is now his mother, and he will love her unconditionally and forever. But he was a cyborg, she adds. Constance becomes anxious when conversation deteriorates to talk of movies. She brings out her mother’s replacement knees, which she requested upon her mother’s cremation, though her husband, Jim, maintains that he was the one who requested them. Laughing, Martha says that this is the most macabre thing she has ever witnessed in her life. The heavy knees are passed around. Later, Martha tells the story of the tenant in her Palm Beach condominium (willed to Martha by her mother) who committed suicide there by shotgun. It cost two thousand dollars to get the blood out of the carpets. The other tenants of the condominium are annoyed at Martha because she didn’t come up right away from Key West to deal with the situation. Read More