Door Number One

- By Jim Hicks

A little hard to believe, but it’s already been over three years since I joined the MR team. Whatever I’ve done right during that time, of course, I owe to my colleagues, and I certainly learned more from our editor emeritus, Jules Chametzky, than anyone else. This magazine has a grand history and sets a high bar. Tall shoulders to stand on.

One of the most important of Jules’ lessons was that editing opens unexpected doors, that you never know just who you’ll meet on the elevator. His jewel of a memoir, Out of Brownville, has a stockingful of such stories—countless unforgettable portraits of the writers and artists he’s encountered over the years.

I’m starting to get a sense of how such things happen. A couple of years ago, for example, I went down to the New York Book Expo to try and scout out, in the midst of that circus, the four or five publishers we really count as fellow travelers. I spent most of my time with my friends Michel Moushabeck and Hiltrud Schulz, from Interlink Publishing, one of the very few presses not only committed to putting out work in translation, but also making it work—now for twenty-five years running!

I also had the good fortune to meet Paul Kozlowski from Other Press. Among the many wonderful books on their shelves, I noticed several by an Italian author that my wife happened to be reading and thoroughly enjoying. So I asked if, by chance, they had anything by him in the pipeline, and if we might possibly collaborate by publishing an excerpt. As it turned out, they did—the very book I’d just heard so much about. And, as it turned out, the author himself would soon be coming to the States for the first time—just after our excerpt from his novel came out. So that’s how Erri De Luca happened to come to Amherst.

As always, in his visit to the University of Massachusetts, Erri was gracious, generous, and inspiring. He gave a public reading from The Day Before Happiness and also presented a short film, Beyond the Glass, which he’d written and starred in. A year or so later, a panel of judges selected Michael F. Moore’s translation of De Luca for our second Chametzky Prize. And Erri and I have continued to work together as well, on a number of projects, including the filmscript for The Night Shift Belongs to the Stars, a live action short directed by Edoardo Ponti that has recently been shortlisted for the Oscars. The moral to this story? Not only you never know what’s behind any given door—when you open it, you never even know how many other doors are waiting behind.

A holiday season is a time for giving thanks, and also for reflecting on what we value most. As it turns out, the other day a friend sent me a YouTube video where Erri De Luca reads one of his poems on this very theme. A holiday gift to our readers. Buone feste!

Finding Value

I find value in every form of life—snow, strawberries, a fly.
I find value in the mineral kingdom and the congress of stars.
I find value in wine while a meal lasts, an involuntary smile,
the fatigue that comes from not holding back,
and an old couple in love.
I find value in what tomorrow will be worth nothing,
and what today is still worth little.
I find value in every sort of wound.
I find value in conserving water, mending a pair of shoes,
holding your tongue, running toward a scream, asking before sitting down,
and feeling grateful without recalling why.
I find value knowing where north is inside a room,
and the name of the wind drying the laundry.
I find value in the rover’s travel, the nun’s retreat,
and the convict’s patience, whatever the crime.
I find value in using the verb “to love”
and in the presumption that a creator exists.
Many of these values I have not known.