Men in red vests enter in the wake of the crowd’s leaving,
their sneakers rustling hollow soda cups and corndog sleeves.
This is the dingy hush of half-eaten pretzels, half-empty
popcorn buckets. When the crew has finished clearing debris
Book by TEJU COLE
Reviewed by
In Teju Cole’s Open City, Julius, a young Nigerian-German psychiatrist living in New York, wanders the city. For Julius, “the walks [meet] a need: they [are] a release from the tightly regulated mental environment of work….Every decision—where to turn left, how long to remain lost in thought…—[is] inconsequential, and [is] for that reason a reminder of freedom.” For readers, Julius’ meandering serves as a platform for meditations on history, art, human suffering, race, and culture, and the cumulative effect is anything but inconsequential. To call Open City a novel is like calling the White House a house: although it’s structured around a protagonist, it is driven by perceptiveness, the agility with which it moves from one idea to another, and its humanity.
Deb Olin Unferth likes to change it up. Her first book was the story collection Minor Robberies, then came the novel Vacation, and this winter she published a memoir. Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War, like much of her other work in other forms, tells a daring story rife with humor and touched with melancholy, desire, and regret.
In a long, low building with a tin roof, people from this village turn clamshells into buttons. Beyond the broken windows lie middens of clamshells, punctuated with precise and uniform holes. The gravel mixes with broken shells and thick, pale unfinished buttons.
Join us at the Brooklyn Book Festival, the “largest free literary event in New York City,” on September 18. Enjoy themed readings, panel discussions, and book signings, all at beautiful Brooklyn Borough Hall.
In Greece, people visit islands. There are a lot of islands to visit. They head for beaches, coastline, the sea, to lie on the shore and look out at the water. But to find an island, you should really look inland. The island is the thing behind you. Turn around.
On a small Cycladic island, a second home for me by marriage, I swelter by the beach. Idyllic, busy, and anonymous. A limited sense of context: a watery horizon; sand; shops, bars and restaurants. At 40°C in the shade, it’s all swimming costumes and ice cream and plastic toys.
The New Yorker cites The Common as a new journal that has found its way.
Amherst Magazine features The Common in the Spring 2011 issue: Print Makes a Stand.
The Millions affirms The Common‘s mission; essayist Sonya Chung says that, through The Common, “I seem to find my nowhere-somewhere, a peculiar feeling of home; my modern sense of place.”
Orion Magazine welcomes The Common’s first issue with open arms, praising the magazine’s beauty, contributors and dedication to print.
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