News & Events | Page 194 | The Common | A Modern Sense of Place: Stories, Poems, Essays & Images

Rabbit’s Foot

February 19, 2016 Dispatches

My dad’s black mutt slunk up to the front porch, looking slowly back and forth and crouching down low to the ground. I knew that body language: she was unsure of how a gift she had for us would be received. Her mouth was full of something. “Spit it out, girl,” I commanded. She gently separated her jaws and rolled a small brown ball of fur off her tongue. It was a wild baby rabbit, so small that at first I thought it was a mouse. But then I saw its ears and pink nose, and, as any nine-year-old girl would, I jumped and let out a squeak. Then I composed myself by taking a deep breath and patted my dog on the head. “Good girl, Macy. I’ve got it from here.”

Ask a Local: Krys Lee, Seoul, South Korea

February 18, 2016 Interviews

With KRYS LEE

Your name: Krys Lee

Current city or town: Seoul

How long have you lived there? Outside of my schooling years (elementary school to university), and a year in Rome, I’ve lived in Seoul all my life. So that would make it over half my life?

Salt and Light

February 13, 2016 Essays, In House

By JAMES ALAN GILL

island in ocean

Seaside, OR

Two days after my birthday, we drove over the coast range to Seaside. It was a Monday, and I’d taken off from work, knowing I’d need a recovery day after the party that had lasted from Saturday afternoon till Sunday morning. Some might think that lazy or irresponsible; I think it’s just knowing yourself.

The weather had been sunny when we left our place in Newberg, a small town south of Portland in the Oregon wine country, but by the time we started up into the steep ridges separating the Willamette Valley from the ocean, the rain had started, which wasn’t a surprise, as it had already been one of the rainiest winters on record: in December there had been 25 straight days of rain, which is in the ballpark of 40 days and 40 nights. Jane took a nap, while I drove squinting through the water-blurred windshield. I always teased her about being able to fall asleep anywhere, and I smiled now at how peaceful her face was while I guided our 25-year-old Pathfinder—which we’d bought from a towing company for 500 bucks after it had been abandoned in downtown Eugene—along this curving road lined by 200-foot-tall fir trees growing up from the slopes below.

Amherst College LitFest 2016

February 9, 2016 News and Events

Event Date:

Thursday, March 3, 2016 – 7:30pm – Saturday, March 5, 2016 – 5:00pm

Location:

Amherst College

Friday Reads: February 2016

February 5, 2016 Reviews

By MARIAN CROTTY, NICK FULLER GOOGINS, GRANT KITTRELL, SARAH SMARSH

How much more palatable is any dish when “imbued with the stories of home”? We’re exploring that this month in our recommendations, which variously braid entertainment and education in their reading experiences. Grow as a writer, a poet, a consumer, a human being—and do it while laughing, remembering home, or teetering on the edge of your seat.

Recommended:

The End of Vandalism by Tom Drury, The Door by Magda Szabó,Ennui Prophet by Christopher Kennedy, Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love by Simran Sethi

Horizontal Feminists: An Interview with Alexander Chee

February 2, 2016 Interviews

By JULIA LICHTBLAU

Alexander Chee’s new novel The Queen of the Night, set almost entirely in France under the Second Empire (1866–1872), is the first-person narrative of a silver-voiced American orphan who maneuvers her way to acclaim as an opera singer, via the circus, can-can dancing, prostitution, and service as the Empress’s maid. Three desires drive Lilliet: to free herself from the tenor who literally owns her (having bought her from a whore house), to become a singer, and to reunite with the man she loves. Chee’s novel sumptuously recreates the intertwined worlds of les grandes horizontales or courtesans, the opera, and the court of Emperor Louis-Napoléon and Empress Eugénie with its spies and secret police.

This winter in Manhattan, New York, The Common’s Book Reviews Editor Julia Lichtblau talked at length with Alexander Chee about his forthcoming novel.

Review: The Queen of the Night

February 2, 2016 Reviews

Book by ALEXANDER CHEE
Reviewed by JULIA LICHTBLAU

The Queen of the Night

Every so often a contemporary novel makes me want to go back to college—not because I don’t get it, but because the book induces a craving to know everything about its world. Reading The Queen of the Night, Alexander Chee’s hefty second novel, ten years in the making, I was ready to fill out the applications for a Master’s in 19th century French history and literature (with a minor in opera).

Set mostly in France under the Second Empire, (1866–1872), it’s the first-person narrative of a silver-voiced American orphan and master of self-reinvention, who becomes a European opera star and brushes the pinnacles of European power before crashing back to earth in the New World. Her rebirth wouldn’t be out of place on reality TV.

January 2016 Poetry Feature

January 29, 2016 Podcasts & Audio, Poetry

New Work for the New Year

This month we welcome Cassandra Cleghorn to our pages, presenting poems included in her first book, Four Weathercocks, which will be published by Marick Press in March. We’re also happy to be welcoming back TC contributors David Lehman, Jonathan Moody, and Sylvie Durbec. Lehman’s new book is Sinatra’s Century: One Hundred Notes on the Man and His World. Jonathan Moody won the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Prize for his collection Olympic Butter Gold, published in November 2015. The book includes five poems first published in The Common. Jean Follain Prize-winner Sylvie Durbec’s poem “Shining Red in the Torrent” is offered here in its entirety, translated by Denis Hirson. An excerpt from the poem was published in The Common Issue 10.

Review: The Small Backs of Children

January 23, 2016 Reviews

BY LIDIA YUKNAVITCH
Reviewed by ANDREW WILLIS

The Small Backs of Children

In 1964, Justice Potter Stewart defended the First Amendment right of movie theaters to show a French art film called The Lovers. With characteristic candor, Stewart wrote that he knew the film was not pornographic because even though he couldn’t strictly define such material, he could say, rather famously now, “I know it when I see it.” When he saw The Lovers, he didn’t see “it,” that “hard-core” obscenity; he saw art. I envy Stewart’s certainty, his uncannily astute powers of perception. I can’t always claim that I see the clear line between art and obscenity, or the times in which art, for art’s sake, justifies the dubious means of its creation. Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Small Backs of Children is merely the latest to leave me wondering about art and the blurred lines it creates.