No. 10
The Chinese Chekhov: the letters of Shen Congwen; Yiyun Li on kindness; Tim O'Sullivan's Father Olufemi; Mary-Beth Hughes's widow of Combarelles; Samanta Schweblin's brother Walter; David Potter's Dr. Kreutzer; Lawrence Weschler on Alec Soth's Las Vegas birthday party; Jenny Davidson, Graham Foust, Paul Glimcher, and Amy Leach on tomorrow; and poems by Cynthia Lowen, Jennifer Moxley, Ed Roberson, John Yau, and more.
If You See Something
All Came to an End
No. 10 • Grant Wood
In 1931, in the throes of the Great Depression, Grant Wood made a chronological list of thirteen prior economic depressions, beginning with 1819.If You See Something
To the New Year
No. 10 • Graham Foust
Comes upon and at me / does your gone-tinged promise.If You See Something
Donkey Derby
No. 10 • Amy Leach
Usually all we have to do when we go a-conquering is to build a boat, find a benefactress, recruit a ribald crew, and wear radiant glinting helmets.If You See Something
Rachet Rachet Rachet
No. 10 • Jenny Davidson
I’m sure I’ll take you with pleasure!” the Queen said.If You See Something
Whose Fault Is It?
No. 10 • Paul Glimcher
Since the time of Descartes, Westerners have seen their core identity as a feature that stands apart from the physical world.Fiction
The Woman Who Lived in the House
No. 10 • Salvatore Scibona
He learned of Sergei’s arrest and imprisonment when a waiter switched the television to CNN.Fiction
Father Olufemi
No. 10 • Tim O’Sullivan
There seemed to be a fellow feeling between the priest and bus driver, each too slight for his uniform.Art
Las Vegas Birthday Book
No. 10 • Alec Soth
My wife took me to Las Vegas to celebrate my fortieth birthday.Feature
On Alec Soth’s Las Vegas Birthday Book
No. 10 • Lawrence Weschler
Alec Soth’s spare volume of documentation culminates in that deliciously inspired last-minute stab at monetary redemption.Fiction
The Widow of Combarelles
No. 10 • Mary-Beth Hughes
Patty promised her old friend Coren she had the very best cure for heartache: the shrewd and pitiless French.Fiction
Dr. Kreutzer
No. 10 • David Potter
At night, alone in the greenhouse, Dr. Kreutzer listens to Bach.Poetry
Think Your Way Out of the Rain
No. 10 • Matthew Rohrer
I got to meet my heroes / and have dinner with themPoetry
Two Poems
No. 10 • Giampiero Neri
In that part of the field / near the woodpile / had arisen an indistinct figure, / like a deeper blotch / in the evening darkness, / a seeming dog flying over the roofs.Poetry
Parable of the Children
No. 10 • Cynthia Lowen
If it is better to be feared / than loved, best of all / pitied—obeyed not out of threat / but an understanding / the inability to harm / makes benevolence / a moot point.Poetry
Bidwell Park
No. 10 • D.A. Powell
When the previously withheld faces grew tough as flax / or softened into pliant pine in the umber wood, inclined / together, numerous, when the cobble crushed underfoot, / and pistachios cracked in their shells, grown heavy, / grown consummate among the nibs of leaves, then curious / seemed the stars, those nether eyes which scrutinized / each shape that stirred against the unlit trunks of trees.Poetry
Staying
No. 10 • Stephen Dunn
No more the lovely ease of it all, / and many years removed / from those languorous afternoons / where, together, they seemed / to create their own airPoetry
Going in Circles
No. 10 • W. S. Di Piero
Here’s a George Raft rat speeding above the subway’s sacred hot railPoetry
Two Poems
No. 10 • John Yau
Behind the hill / overlooking our tiny enclave / dwells a giant known far and widePoetry
Two Trees
No. 10 • Eamon Grennan
Wintering Beech / Tabernacle of green light green shade, summer space / of beechen green and shadows numberless, / that’s now but a bony show of itself, all its / ornaments and nest-hiding glad rags / wind-torn and let go where silence opens / its stony arms.Poetry
Each Gets So Shamefully Little
No. 10 • Mary Crow
Each gets so shamefully little, only half a face, honed to a fine point, like swallow shadows dipping after mosquitoesPoetry
Not That, Disappointment
No. 10 • Jennifer Moxley
I am inappropriate I feel it / in every said thing in every / enthusiasm desire wish / but mostly in every / unsettling ambitionPoetry
Moon Jar, Century Unclear
No. 10 • Ed Roberson
Part of the pearlescent surface is gone / from the glass back to sandPoetry
Two Poems
No. 10 • James Schuyler
The turrets, self-conscious and vulgar, / the doors, so functional, / the tinted windows, lovely and perhaps unreasonable.Fiction
Public AccessKindness
No. 10 • Yiyun Li
I am a forty-one-year-old woman living by myself, in the same one-bedroom flat where I have always lived, in a derelict building on the outskirts of Beijing that is threatened to be demolished by government-backed real estate developers.Feature
An Irrelevant Writer: Yiyun Li Introduces Shen Congwen
No. 10 • Shen Congwen
Great books are never abandoners—they don’t betray us; they don’t turn away from our candid admiration or criticism; they don’t die.Feature
Letter to the Editor
No. 10
The “historic” novel is, for me, condemned even in cases of labour as delicate as yours, to a fatal cheapness, for the simple reason that the difficulty of the job is inordinate and that a mere escamotage, in the interest of ease, and of the abysmal public naiveté becomes inevitable.Order A Public Space
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