{"id":122924,"date":"2018-03-16T13:00:12","date_gmt":"2018-03-16T17:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=122924"},"modified":"2018-03-16T13:01:38","modified_gmt":"2018-03-16T17:01:38","slug":"staff-picks-cucumbers-chiropractors-and-kleptocrats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/03\/16\/staff-picks-cucumbers-chiropractors-and-kleptocrats\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff Picks: Cucumbers, Chiropractors, and Kleptocrats"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Kathleen Collins<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ever since Nicole first handed me \u201cScapegoat Child<\/a>,\u201d the gorgeous yet harrowing\u00a0piece of short fiction by the late Kathleen Collins in our\u00a0Spring issue<\/a>, I\u2019ve found myself returning, time and time again, to the writer\u2019s first posthumous collection of stories,\u00a0Whatever Happened to Interracial Love<\/a>?<\/i>\u00a0The book\u2019s cover, which features a collage by\u00a0Lorna Simpson<\/a>\u00a0of a young woman with a wash of purple ink for hair, sets the tone, and the stories that follow are just as arresting. In them, we hear from people of all shades,\u00a0each of whom experience\u00a0torment and love in equal measure.\u00a0Collins writes of an uncle who can\u2019t keep himself from crying (\u201cI began to weep for him, weep tears of pride and joy that he should have so soaked his life in sorrow and gone back to some ancient ritual beyond the blunt humiliation of his skin\u201d); of a girl who\u00a0cuts her hair (making her look, in her father\u2019s words, \u201cjust like any other colored girl\u201d) and later falls for her professor; of interracial love (\u201cI want to be a Negro for you,\u201d says a white boy to his girlfriend).\u00a0Put simply, Collins is a marvel, her prose ethereal and haunting and sharp.\u00a0As Elizabeth Alexander writes in the book\u2019s introduction, \u201cShe flinches from nothing.\u201d\u00a0\u2014Caitlin Youngquist<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As Tatyana Tolstaya states in the title story of\u00a0Aetherial Worlds<\/i><\/a>, her first collection of short stories to be translated into English in over twenty years, \u201cSpring in the states, on the East Coast, is basically crazy.\u201d\u00a0The collection\u2014which is out\u00a0the same week as the spring equinox (next week, for those less in tune with their almanacs)\u2014anchors a collection of dark, funny folkloric tales. Each is masterful in its ability to keep apace with the world\u2019s banalities and frustrations while moving seamlessly into the surreal. Her characters are haunted by ghosts, but also by the alienation they feel among Americans. Tolstaya is funniest when observing life in American universities and darkest when writing\u2014as she does in the stories \u201cAspic,\u201d \u201cSmoke,\u201d and \u201cShadows\u201d\u2014about a melancholy deadening the hearts of her characters.\u00a0Tolstaya\u2019s conscious aversion to sentimentality makes you feel as if you alone are catching a glimpse into the secretly vulnerable and deeply captivating souls of her characters. \u2014Lauren Kane<\/strong><\/p>\n

In my tote and under my pillow this week is Ashleigh Young\u2019s essay collection,\u00a0Can You Tolerate This<\/a>?<\/i>\u00a0I’ve been reading the book since its New Zealand publication last year, but its upcoming U.S. release put it back on my radar. The longest essay is just over thirty pages, the shortest fewer than two; most hover around a mere eight or ten. Young\u2019s voice is soothing, unsure, and searching as she narrates her childhood in provincial New Zealand and pokes into\u00a0the lives of those who populated it\u2014her father, her brother, her chiropractor.\u00a0Can You Tolerate This?\u00a0<\/i>asks its titular question at every turn, and the answer always seems to be yes.\u00a0\u2014Eleanor Pritchett\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Big Big Wednesday<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>is a beautifully crafted literary magazine produced in Portland, Oregon. Since 2013, they\u2019ve published one issue per annum, and each is chock-full of poetry, art portfolios, and blissfully short fiction. The fifth and most recent issue features a watercolored cover with a seaweed seascape and charming sock-footed divers.\u00a0I devoured their contributors notes, in which each writer issues a recommendation. Perhaps it\u2019s odd to staff pick another literary magazine\u2019s staff picks, but I can\u2019t help myself. Laura Brown-Lavoie recommends \u201cgrabbing a few cucumbers on your way to the beach and eating them after you swim so the seawater on your lips salts them up.\u201d I was compelled, at Stephen Tuttle\u2019s direction, to seek out \u201cWillie, the Operatic Whale,\u201d a Disney animated short from 1964, voiced entirely by Nelson Eddy, and I caught myself singing for an obnoxiously long time afterward. (NB:\u00a0Big Big Wednesday<\/em> is accepting submissions for its sixth issue until\u00a0May 1<\/span><\/span>.)\u00a0\u2014Molly Livingston<\/strong><\/p>\n

Samuel Hynes\u2019s\u00a0On War and Writing<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(out\u00a0next month<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>) is a collection of essays that drives home a point: war is unimaginable but has nevertheless \u201ccaptured the world\u2019s imagination.\u201d Throughout the collection, Hynes discusses his own experiences as a Marine Corps pilot, the accounts of others who have\u00a0fought in\u00a0war, and the literature of people who did not fight but who wrote about war.\u00a0Originally published at varying points throughout the last half century, these essays together lead\u00a0readers\u00a0toward a kind of solution: it is impossible to imagine the unimaginable, but it is possible to find meaning in always wanting to try.\u00a0\u2014Claire Benoit<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Still from The Death of Stalin<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Self-seriousness has always been fertile ground for comedy. From the obscene marginalia in medieval religious manuscripts to eighties slob vs. snob comedies, people who can\u2019t joke about themselves are irresistible foils for irony and mockery. There\u2019s no system less capable of joking about itself than an authoritarian regime. Laughter is understood by those in power to be a threat to obedience. Tyranny requires a state of constant crisis\u2014that things remain serious, in other words, at all times. Absurdity, in turn, grows in the hollows of these rigid, cloistered systems as naturally and irresistibly as mold.\u00a0Such absurdity is the animating feature of Armando Iannucci\u2019s hilarious new film,\u00a0The Death of Stalin<\/a>, <\/em>which tells the story of Stalin\u2019s deputies, who jockey for power after his sudden departure. In the lingering atmosphere of fear and toadyism conjured by the now-dead dictator, unanimity and grief become punch lines. After seeing the film, I returned home and reread another great comedy of the Soviet Union, Venedikt Erofeev\u2019s Moscow to the End of the Line<\/em><\/a>. Distributed as samizdat in 1969, it draws comedy not from the anxious terror of the Stalin era but from the apathy and cynicism of the Brezhnev era. Erofeev\u2019s quick, jumpy prose mocks nearly every passion and invention of the Russian literary soul. While Iannucci collects absurdities from a temporal and physical distance (Putin\u2019s Russia has banned the film, unsurprisingly), Erofeev clowns right under the noses of the humorless.\u00a0\u2014Matt Levin<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Ever since Nicole first handed me \u201cScapegoat Child,\u201d the gorgeous yet harrowing\u00a0piece of short fiction by the late Kathleen Collins in our\u00a0Spring issue, I\u2019ve found myself returning, time and time again, to the writer\u2019s first posthumous collection of stories,\u00a0Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?\u00a0The book\u2019s cover, which features a collage by\u00a0Lorna Simpson\u00a0of a young woman […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[438],"tags":[33398,33403,33404,33402,33154,33406,9712,33401,12805,447,33400,13517,2616,33405,33399],"class_list":["post-122924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-reading","tag-aetherial-worlds","tag-ashleigh-young","tag-big-big-wednesday","tag-can-you-tolerate-this","tag-kathleen-collins","tag-moscor-to-the-end-of-the-line","tag-new-zealand","tag-on-war-and-writing","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-samuel-hynes","tag-stalin","tag-tatyana-tolstaya","tag-the-death-of-stain","tag-whatever-happened-to-interracial-love"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStaff Picks: Cucumbers, Chiropractors, and Kleptocrats<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This week, the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 reads about love, war, and 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