Many spoons in the sink, and that means it was a dull night, too much coffee and ice cream, not enough foreplay. If there are many forks, it was probably a good night. But most importantly if there were many knives used, it was a great night, even if misunderstandings arose, people were stabbed, blood flowed. Spoons suggest measuring. After most suicides, detectives discover many spoons in the sink. There may be one knife that killed a person, but it is merely a symbol of too many spoons and forks: a wish for knives at table. Eliot was wise about spoons measuring life; even Edgar Lee Masters saw their monotony well enough. All those sentimental songs about “spooning”. Even what spoon rhymes with is worth- less: moon, June, croon. Spoon never rhymes with wife the way knife does. Forks are frequently connected with a type of sex, but what this type is—no one knows. And even the fork has a kind of character which can’t be denied, and yet it is not the mark of an outstanding evening. The happy household is spoonless, but don’t be fooled by chopsticks. Houses need knives. Families depend on knives to survive. A man may eat peas off a knife; he may drink blood from it. A sink filled with knives is a house that has had an eventful dinner.
Aisha Sabatini Sloan
Episode 22: “Form and Formlessness”
In an essay specially commissioned for the podcast, Aisha Sabatini Sloan describes rambling around Paris with her father, Lester Sloan, a longtime staff photographer for Newsweek, and a glamorous woman who befriends them. In an excerpt from The Art of Fiction no. 246, Rachel Cusk and Sheila Heti discuss how writing her first novel helped Cusk discover her “shape or identity or essence.” Next, Allan Gurganus’s reading of his story “It Had Wings,” about an arthritic woman who finds a fallen angel in her backyard, is interspersed with a version of the story rendered as a one-woman opera by the composer Bruce Saylor. The episode closes with “Dear Someone,” a poem by Deborah Landau.
Rachel Cusk photo courtesy the author.
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