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Autumn Journal on Autumn Journal: 11

November 10, 2020 - By Michael Thurston

(Photo: Kim Novak, from Hitchcock's Vertigo)


Read Part 10 here
 

“Everything wrong has been proved.”

Events of world-historical magnitude rage, both across the map and just outside our doors, rage even inside our homes, carried there by howling radios and their offspring. Work continues apace as we prepare, commute, spend the day in toil, and bring home all that has to be done for the next day. Sometimes the big political or public stuff grabs our attention for a while. Often we have no choice but to focus on the job (it pays the bills, after all). But most of us, most of the time, are probably...

10 Questions for Mike Day

November 9, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

Rain fell violently through the night. San Ye thought of the gravestones in Dongba, and the flesh and bones beneath, and the clothes and things buried with the bodies. The coffins must be swimming in slimy muck. . .he couldn't sleep.

He tossed and turned until dawn, got up, and looked outside to see the bridge over the river had collapsed. Sodden planks drifted on the current, spinning gleefully before floating away with bits of rope, branches, and the sedge grass, never to be seen again.
—from "Song of Parting" by Lu Min, Translated by Michael Day, Volume 61, Issue 3 (Fall 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
Let’s talk about Dorothy Tse’s “Chickens,” the first...

Beanie the Cat

November 7, 2020 - By W. D. Ehrhart

(Photo: Beanie in the Tunnel, June 2, 2020. Anne Ehrhart.)
 

November 6th, 2020

Anne and I have been holding our breath
for three days, trying not to think,
or feel, or contemplate the implications
of another four years of madness
if our current president should win,
astounded it should be so close
we still don’t know who won.
What kind of country could this be
to have so many voters ready
to return to office such a man?
Dishonest, criminal, amoral,
pathologically narcissistic,
ignorant, uncaring, vile. A grifter.
One struggles to avoid despair.

10 Questions for Allison Braden

November 6, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

"I don't consider myself sensual," Antonia said, pulling the sheet across her torso and stroking his hair. Miguel smiled without her noticing. He knew she was trying to draw out praise for her skin, her body, her lips. Antonia was provoking him. She knew she was irresistible. She knew that any movement of hers, however subtle, would set off a chain reaction that would end in a moan, both pitiful and powerful.
—from "Double Antonia" by Andrea Maturana, Translated by Allison Braden, Volume 61, Issue 3 (Fall 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
The first work I translated was María José Ferrada’s Kramp, a delightful novella about a Chilean girl who assists her traveling salesman father. It...

Autumn Journal on Autumn Journal: 10

November 3, 2020 - By Michael Thurston

(Photo: Persephone reunited with her mother Demeter)

Read Part 9  here

“And so return to work.”

Just as a present-day trip to Birmingham sends MacNeice into memories of his earlier life in that city, section IX’s thoughts on teaching classics provoke a reverie in which MacNeice recalls “the beginnings of other terms,” a sort of capsule portrait of the artist as a young student, stretching back to his earliest days at Sherborne and his sojourn at Marlborough. And if section IX critically wonders about the value of what MacNeice teaches, section X appraises the...