“Some Female Cats and People”
Olivia Clare
"For we did love them, which is to say we watched them. Knew their habits and spoke gently and quietly about them. Loved them and did not ask for love in return."
Home Archive by category Excerpts (Page 76)
Excerpts
Henry, Himself
Stewart O'Nan
"Every night before bed they watched the weather, yet when spring finally arrived it was a shock. One morning they woke to fog in the trees and robins on the lawn. By noon the snow was gone, the gutters glinting with runoff. The sunshine felt like a reward for surviving the winter. The crocuses beside the basement hatch poked through, and the daffodils around the birdbath. While Emily weeded in her coolie hat and kneepads, he scooped the thawed poop and bundled the fallen branches, picturing Ella and Sam hunting Easter eggs. It was too early to mulch, according to Emily, so he satisfied himself with taking down the feeders and vacuuming up the chaff, terrorizing Rufus with the hose. Though it was still cold enough that he had to wear a jacket, she opened the windows and aired out the house."
A Wonderful Stroke of Luck
Ann Beattie
"Ladies and gentlemen, today Dr. Ha, though called upon, was unable to speak, so The Powers That Be have decreed that in the absence of the museum’s art adviser, Ms. Alwyn-Black, who is ill, I am to say something about this painting, The Peaceable Kingdom, which has newly arrived at the Harriet G. and Hubert J. Felton Gallery, on permanent loan from the cousin of an alumnus.”
Lost and Wanted
Nell Freudenberger
"In the first few months after Charlie died, I began hearing from her much more frequently. This was even more surprising than it might have been, since Charlie wasn’t a good correspondent even when she was alive."
Crossing
Pajtim Statovci, translated by David Hackston
"When I think about my own death, the moment it happens is always the same. I’m wearing a plain, colored shirt and a matching pair of pants, cut from thin material that’s easy to pull on. It’s early in the morning and I am happy, I feel the same sense of contentment and satisfaction as I do at the first mouthfuls of my favorite meal. There are certain people around me, I don’t know them yet, but one day I will, and I’m in a certain place, lying on my hospital bed in my own room, nobody is dying around me, outside the day is slowly struggling to its feet like a rheumatic old man, I hear certain words from the mouths of my loved ones, a certain touch on my hand, and the kiss on my cheek feels like the home I have built around me like a shrine."
The Republic
Joost de Vries, translated by Jane Hedley-Prôle
"Moments after arriving in Chile I slipped on the aircraft steps, and although my fall was broken by various items of hand luggage and the elderly couple in front of me, I still hit the tarmac with considerable force. I mostly felt embarrassed. A stewardess hurried over and took me to a first-aid post at the terminal, where a young doctor cleaned and bandaged the graze on my upper arm. Sorted. A mere ten minutes later I was in a taxi."
Olive Schreiner: Charlotte Brontë of South Africa, 19th-Century Celebrity
On Compassion and Dissent in an Outpost of Empire
The Old Drift
Namwali Serpell
"Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Over the past year, Thandiwe had developed an internal clock for when the seat-belt sign would go off. As the plane’s steep climb slowly tilted forward and evened out, she counted. Tick. Tick. DING."
A Change of Time
Ida Jessen, translated by Martin Aitken
"January 3, 1904. I am on my way now. Everything is packed. I haven’t even the time to write this. I shall continue later."
Meet the Reclusive Woman Who Became a Pioneer of Science Fiction
The Amazing Stories of Clare Winger Harris
Did Seneca Write a Treatise on Anger in Response to Unstable Leaders?
"Your anger is a kind of madness." The Ancients Talking About Twitter, Probably
Deep Time and an Uncertain Futureon the Orkney Islands
Considering Energy Solutions in Remote Communities
The Quest to Acquire the Oldest, Most Expensive Book on the Planet
Unwrapping the Most Beautiful Gutenberg of Them All
Arturo’s Island
Elsa Morante, translated by Ann Goldstein
"Seeing her again now, I was ashamed that the day before I’d been so intimate with her, going so far as to tell her my secrets! On the bench, forgotten, was my book of Great Leaders: and that sight increased my shame. Angrily I opened the French door, and then finally she saw me."
Barry Lopez on the Hard Question of Humanity’s Survival
Thoughts on Life from a Remote Arctic Island
Make Me a City
Jonathan Carr
"The very title of Mr. Winship’s rambling, labyrinthine tome about Chicago in the nineteenth century hints at the confusion that lies in store for the unsuspecting reader. His opus, claims the author, is both 'Alternative' and a 'History.' An 'Alternative,' one wonders, to what? Any attempt to compare Mr. Winship’s book with the work of serious historians who have addressed key periods of the century gone by would soon founder. For a text to be categorized as 'history' implies, does it not, that attention has been paid to historical truth and accuracy? Anyone, then, who ignores facts or, even worse, blithely distorts facts for his own 'Alternative' purposes has no right to attach the label of 'History' to his offering."
Memories of the Future
Siri Hustvedt
"Years ago I left the wide, flat fields of rural Minnesota for the island of Manhattan to find the hero of my first novel. When I arrived in August of 1978, he was not a character so much as a rhythmic possibility, an embryonic creature of my imagination, which I felt as a series of metrical beats that quickened and slowed with my steps as I navigated the streets of the city. I think I was hoping to discover myself in him, to prove that he and I were worthy of whatever story came our way. I wasn’t looking for happiness or comfort in New York City. I was looking for adventure, and I knew the adventurer must suffer before he arrives home after countless trials on land and sea or is finally snuffed out by the gods. I didn’t know then what I know now: As I wrote, I was also being written. The book had been started long before I left the plains. Multiple drafts of a mystery had already been inscribed in my brain, but that didn’t mean I knew how it would turn out. My unformed hero and I were headed for a place that was little more than a gleaming fiction: the future."
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