‘There doesn’t seem to be any cause and effect.’
The leg with the bum knee drags as he walks. The caretaker runs ahead to shut off the water valves, start up the pump. His only remaining staff are the ageing caretaker and a fat housekeeper who doesn’t let a day go by without airing out the rooms, to let some life pass through, as she says.
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‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
‘So that was betrayal: in a magical realm, assassins and elves were involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the king. Or something like that.’
‘How far can one deviate from the accepted pieties before one is kicked out?’
Brandon Taylor on naturalism and the future of fiction.
‘How does a writer transform a familiar object or character into an instrument of horror?’
Helen Macdonald, Sin Blaché and Isabel Waidner on defamiliarisation, multiple dimensions and constructing characters
‘It is pleasant – to me, confusingly so.’
Michael Hofmann on returning to Germany.
‘It is to Shakespeare’s pages I return whenever I feel I am sinking. There I can be sure to find a lifeline.’
