All posts tagged: 2014

Our Poor Perishable World

By BRIAN SHOLIS

In a photograph Robert Adams took northeast of Riverside, California, in 1982, serpentine paths lead toward the horizon line; it’s not easy to discern whether these are creeks, dirt trails, or roads. Human presence takes the form of wooden poles carrying electric wires, which stride diagonally from the bottom left of the composition toward the distance at right.

Our Poor Perishable World
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Bratislava

By MARY JO SALTER

So I’m still alive and now I’m in Bratislava.
That’s funny. I hadn’t expected to be alive.

A sign in italics nudges us at the station:
Have an amazing time in Bratislava!

That’s funny: a straight-faced wish, offered in English
and then Slovakian, posted above the trash can

Bratislava
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Am I Speaking to Hyman Roth?

By ANTONIO MONDA

Early that morning his telephone had begun ringing nonstop, and he found himself thanking directors, casting directors, producers, actors, and all the members of the Actors Studio. He’d seen many of his actors receive Oscar nominations, but when he heard his name among the 1974 nominees for The Godfather: Part II, Lee Strasberg was astounded. The callers told him he’d been a master actor on the set; he had blown away his own pupils (“They were wonderful, but nothing compared to you”); he’d been able to humanize and at the same time portray the horror that was Hyman Roth; he must have awed even Francis Ford Coppola.

Am I Speaking to Hyman Roth?
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Caleta Beach

By NANI POWER

1.

Papi say we goin on a real vacation and Milky say Vegas and me, Tippy, I say Disney and then Carlo say Nueva York but no, say Papi, we gots to go to Acapulco. I say you mean Mexico and he say sí, cabrón, like I’m a dumbass. Carlo crackin up. 

Caleta Beach
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The Dying of the Deads

By JEFF JACKSON

Part One.

A Map of Everything Swallowed

They start drinking three hours before the funeral. Tequila, mostly. A bottle and a half later, their heads are buzzing on some private wavelength. Hazy shapes slither in front of their eyes. Words sound furry in their ears.

The Dying of the Deads
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Stewardship

By EDMUND SANDOVAL

 

It’s easy to forget you once had control. That you stopped making decisions for yourself. Part of that’s getting older, and I’ve gotten older—not much, but some. It’s what comes with settling down and making some sort of life and having children. And that’s something. We all know that. But then there’s the bad part of it, when you speak up just to realize that you haven’t got any say, that your words stay lodged in your mind, stuck in your throat. That they are altogether gone, like birds migrated for the winter and never come back. Worse than that, you wake up and find out that somebody else was forming your words for you all along. That was me for the longest of times. My best years that I lost when I was silent and tepid and living in the woods. I want to tell of how I got out of that forest. I want to tell about how I came to the clearing whole and intact and feeling good.

Stewardship
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Reichelt’s Parachute

By IAN BASSINGTHWAIGHTE

His name was Gustave Eiffel, and he built his giant French tower because it was impossible—that is what everyone said—to build something so tall. They said the tower would topple under its own weight. Or the wind would blow, the metal would bend, and the rivets would snap. The tower would plunge into the city.

Reichelt’s Parachute
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The Overachieving Underachiever: An Interview with Benjamin Anastas

MELODY NIXON interviews BENJAMIN ANASTAS

Benjamin Anastas

Benjamin Anastas is the author of Too Good to be True, a memoir described by The New York Times as “smart and honest and searching,” and “so plaintive and raw it will leave most writers… with heart palpitations.” He has written two novels, An Underachiever’s Diary, and The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor’s Disappearance, as well as multiple reviews and essays, one of which, “Boys with a Synth,” is published in Issue 06 of The Common. Melody Nixon talked with Anastas about his skepticism for social media, the role of the writer in society, and memoir as fiction’s “whiny and embarrassing stepchild.” 

The Overachieving Underachiever: An Interview with Benjamin Anastas
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