No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story. No Kings.
I waited in three lines to see Michael Stewart. The first line was for the metal detector outside the Guggenheim Museum. The second line, inside the Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda, was for my reserved ticket. The third was to get into the gallery to see Basquiat’s “Defacement,” his portrait of Michael Stewart being “defaced” by police violence.
I find it strange that in our troubled world, I should be trying to convince you to read a poem.
In my ongoing project of reading all of Chekhov’s stories, I am more than halfway along, and I have come upon this small gem about Ognev and Vera.
I should have been smart enough to realize something most peculiar was up if I had noticed that the title page of Joy Williams short story in the Sept 30th New Yorker was all in small caps, both title and author’s name. That can be taken as a signal of formal innovation, an expectation that is most often disappointed, only not in this case.
The Memory Police approaches Kafka in its literary excellence, which is a startling surprise. It’s as dark as dystopian gets, but sensitive and extremely precise in its dark matter energy.
Those who love the country of books and the provinces of language, as Javier Marais clearly does, will love this book.