2011 | Page 11 | The Common

Adam and Eve—and Reverend West—in Ohio

May 23, 2011 Essays

My book Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden is a history of people who have searched for the Garden of Eden on Earth. This seems like a project with the perfect excuse to travel to all sorts of exotic locales, but it started out as a way to get inside someone’s head. According to family rumor, my great-uncle, an allergist and university professor who died before I was born, had planned to travel to the Garden of Eden, by plane, in the 1950s. My great-uncle, apparently, was a believer both in science and in the literal truth of the Bible. But how could he hold conflicting ideas in his mind at once? If I could figure out where he thought Eden was, maybe I could get closer to understanding this.

The Balkan

May 18, 2011 Dispatches

By CRALAN KELDER

The Balkan in my neighborhood, I give him small amounts of money a few
times a week, it’s not what you think. A lot of people do this. About his wife,
he tells me he has none. My daughter, he sees her smile a flash flood,
always gives her a cookie. His word is börek, translates as ‘savory pastry’
pronounced “boo-wreck”. For this I gladly give him money. Spinach and feta.
Bigger than your hand, hot from the oven. With meat or cheese, pasta layers,
flaky dough. He works 6 days a week. He was taking a nap in the park a few
years ago, we were there eating homemade sticky cake. I offer him some, he
rigorously declines. Does he recognise me? Was it inappropriate?

Boston Launch Event

May 17, 2011 Dispatches, News and Events

Event Date:

Wednesday, June 8, 2011 – 7:00pm

Location:

Porter Square Books

We’re celebrating the release of Issue 01 in Boston! Join us if you’re in the area on June 8th at Porter Square Books (Cambridge, MA) for readings by Ilan Stavans and Sabina Murray. The event starts at 7PM and is free & open to the public. Refreshments will be provided. For more information, please visit here.

Night Fishing, Devil’s Kitchen Lake

May 11, 2011 Dispatches

By JAMES A. GILL

—for Rodney Jones

After the accident, when I no longer walked with a cane, we met there at dusk. I hesitated stepping off the dock into the gently swaying boat, still unsure of the steel screwed into my bones, scared in that instant, like every other, of the infinite number of ways a person can die. I took my place in the hard plastic fishing seat, and by the time we reached the far side of the lake and tied onto the line of buoys near the spillway, full dark had come. We set our lines and did no more.

That Irresistible Idea: An Interview with Maura Candela

May 9, 2011 Interviews

By HANNAH GERSEN

Maura Candela is one of my favorite writers, as well one of the best storytellers I’ve ever met—two talents that don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand. Her debut fiction, “The Boys’ Club” was featured in the first issue of The Common. Maura has also recently finished a novel called The Love Dogs, which is set in contemporary New York and deals, in part, with the long-term effects of 9/11 on rescue workers and their families.

The Chosen Ones

May 4, 2011 Dispatches

By PETER JAY SHIPPY

When he was 12, he was voted
Most likely to become Satan’s spawn

By the other sixth graders at Gesù
Catholic School in Northy. Lucas

New York Launch Event

May 2, 2011 News and Events

Event Date:

Tuesday, May 10, 2011 – 7:00pm

Location:

BookCourt: 163 Court St Brooklyn, NY

We’re celebrating the release of Issue 01 in New York! Join us on May 10th at BookCourt in Brooklyn for readings by contributors Fiona Maazel and Ted Conover. Meet other local TC contributors, editors, and Brooklyn-based designer Gabriele Wilson, who will be taking postcard suggestions for the next cover (we supply the postcards; you supply the suggestions). The event begins at 7 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

Meet us afterward at 61 Local (61 Bergen Street) for drinks and some fun.

Come pick up your very own copy of red hot issue 01!

Voices from Japan

May 2, 2011 Interviews

HANNAH GERSEN interviews ROLAND KELTS

Aside from Haruki Murakami, much of Japanese writing remains unknown in the U.S., simply because it is not translated into English. Now, thanks to collaboration between the Brooklyn-based literary magazine, A Public Space, and the Tokyo-based literary magazines, Monkey Business, a special English-language edition of Monkey Business is available in the US. This special edition, called “New Voices from Japan”, will showcase the best of the magazine’s first three years of publication and will include stories, poetry, and non-fiction, including an interview with Murakami.

As Stuart Dybek writes in a letter introducing the issue: “The books and anthologies that line my shelves attest to the fact that we live in a golden age of translation. Even so, it’s rare to have a literary magazine like Monkey Business appear in English. It arrives with the sense of discovery and immediacy that one reads literary magazines for.”

Extracts from the Ridiculous American: A Just Plain Strange One-Sided Correspondence

April 27, 2011 Dispatches

By JOCK DOUBLEDAY

AMSTERDAM

October 21, 1998

Dear Diary,

My 39th birthday was spent in the airport, but walking down Herengracht I thought, “Happy Birthday.” Not too excited being here. Looks like just another New York City to me. Of course, it’s dark. We’ll see what daylight brings.