Fiction
Returning to the Problem
By Eugene LimI was being tortured so lost my mind a little. In the beginning they would fold me into a small box and leave me there. Then, after I wouldn’t give them what was impossible for me to give them, they left me alone in a dark cell
The Bar
By Strawberry SaroyanTwo days before leaving for New York to shoot his first movie, Johnny was sitting in a dark bar in L.A. at 1 a.m. asking five friends, who ranged from acquaintances to one woman with whom he’d had a brief fling, if they’d ever had a purely sexual relationship.
from The Waste Pickers
By Sausan Jamil Hasan, translated from the Arabic by William Maynard HutchinsJum‘a al-Dashshash knew all the dumpsters well—where they were located and what they typically contained. He had memorized all the streets and alleys and had learned what people on each were like from the refuse that accumulated in the bins and from the way residents threw trash at the dumpster.
inSerial: part ten
Delusions of Being Observed
By Lewis Warsh
I’d been with Natalie for two years and never slept with anyone else. That’s not true, of course, there’s always an exception. I try to put it out of my mind, to forget it ever happened. I’m not afraid to look in the mirror and ask the hard questions. I can’t pretend something didn’t happen, when I know it did. I can lie under oath, if that’s what it takes. But I can’t hide the truth from myself.
Lost and Found Animals Part 10: The Tennessee Wallgroper: Murafactor Fictifioriana
By Sid GershgorenNo other species except our own has engaged in the construction of walls, no other except the Tennessee Wallgroper, described by now “edge-on” animal “constructivists” as a long-living, non-aquatic, fur-bearing, marsupial-like creature with thick, retractable two-inch claws, a tamandua-like tail and a foreshortened snout (which contains an "under-skin", they say, known to glow in the dark as an “instinct prodded” warning signal)
We Are Fox!
By Tom MotleyT. MOTLEY is the 2016 silver medalist in the Society of Illustrators' Short Form Comics competition, winning for a story he contributed to Cartozia Tales, cartozia.com. He blogs at cartooniologist.blogspot.com and yourdailydoodle.tumblr.com
In Conversation
New Routes in Fiction: David Szalay with Alec Niedenthal
Before this interview I’d read two of David Szalay’s novels, All That Man Is and London and the Southeast (both from Graywolf). The former was nominated for last year’s Man Booker prize; the latter, David’s first novel—he has written a total of four—is being published on our side of the Atlantic for the first time this fall. The text below applies more to All That Man Is than to London, which is a more conventionally structured book.
