{"id":147239,"date":"2020-08-31T13:33:38","date_gmt":"2020-08-31T17:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=147239"},"modified":"2020-08-31T14:06:09","modified_gmt":"2020-08-31T18:06:09","slug":"the-art-of-distance-no-24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/31\/the-art-of-distance-no-24\/","title":{"rendered":"The Art of Distance No. 24"},"content":{"rendered":"

In March,<\/em>\u00a0The Paris Review\u00a0launched<\/em>\u00a0The Art of Distance, a newsletter highlighting unlocked archive pieces that resonate with the staff of<\/em>\u00a0the magazine<\/em>, quarantine-appropriate writing on the<\/em>\u00a0Daily, resources from our peer organizations,<\/em>\u00a0and more. Read Emily Nemens\u2019s introductory letter\u00a0here<\/a>, and find the latest unlocked archive pieces below.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cLast week I wrote about the relative calm of the dog days of summer in NYC. But these same days of languor are hardly that elsewhere around the country and the globe. Wednesday I was rooting for Fernanda Melchor\u2019s <\/em>Hurricane Season at the International Booker Prizes while Hurricane Laura bore down on Louisiana and Texas\u2014a disconcerting coincidence, to say the least. The storm dissipated more quickly than expected, but that did not make its landfall in southwest Louisiana any less destructive. Earlier this month I felt an eerie prescience welcoming the publication of Shruti Swamy\u2019s debut collection, <\/em>A House Is a Body (we published the title story, about a mother\u2019s evacuation from a wildfire, in 2018), as California fires flared again. And until a few weeks ago, the only <\/em>derecho I knew was dance partner to <\/em>izquierda. The Art of Distance began as a meditation on our social distancing during the COVID<\/small> crisis, but this week, that same framework seems to emphasize the distance between here and there, the dichotomous feeling of at once wanting to rush in and help and feeling grateful to be out of harm\u2019s way. But even from afar, we may find inspiration and empathy in literature that stares these disasters in the face, marks their dimensions with incisiveness and artfulness, and, sometimes, even imagines a way forward.\u201d \u2014Emily Nemens, Editor<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Saturday marked the fifteenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Claudia Rankine discusses writing in response to the disaster in her Art of Poetry interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey Called Her the Witch<\/a>,\u201d excerpted from Melchor\u2019s Hurricane Season<\/em>, explains the trauma of the land on which the Witch lives and grows her poisonous herbs: \u201cThey lost everything, right down to the stones of their temples, which ended up buried in the mountainside in the hurricane of \u201978, after the landslide, after the avalanche of mud that swamped more than a hundred locals from La Matosa.\u201d <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a torrential rain that opens Denis Johnson\u2019s \u201cCar-Crash while Hitchhiking<\/a>\u201d: \u201cThe downpour raked the asphalt and gurgled in the ruts \u2026 My jaw ached. I knew every raindrop by its name.\u201d<\/p>\n

The protagonist of Shruti Swamy\u2019s \u201cA House Is a Body<\/a>\u201d first notices \u201cnot the scent of the smoke, but the sight of it, not the sight itself, but the screen through which it altered the sunlight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is because my husband is from the midwest\u2009\/\u2009that he dreams of twisters,\u201d writes Karen Fish in \u201cThe Dreams<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whiteout snow comes for Alice and her husband in Willa C. Richards\u2019s \u201cFailure to Thrive<\/a>\u201d\u2014a story that was just republished in Best Debut Short Stories 2020<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

In \u201cDiary of a Fire Lookout<\/a>,\u201d Philip Connors describes the history of forest fire: \u201cAn ancient juniper from the heart of the Gila shows that fire burned around it, on average, every seven years; fire helped it thrive. Ponderosa covered much of the forest in open parkland with trees forty to sixty feet apart, surrounded by grass. Then, in the nineteenth century, the cow arrived.\u201d<\/p>\n

In \u201cStorm and After<\/a>,\u201d Alexander Craig describes the chaos of a storm and the subsequent daybreak, \u201cglistening and slate-gray.\u201d<\/p>\n

To support people recovering from natural disasters, please consider making a donation to the American Red Cross<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sign up\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0to receive a fresh installment of The Art of Distance in your inbox every Monday<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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