‘Against each wall stands an ornate throne—junk, dark Victorian junk, pulled by crowbar twenty years ago from the old lodge in the doomed downtown. Sitting on each is a battered looking Elk in a frayed tuxedo or black suit, his shoes cracked as the skin around his eyes. You feel sure they will sleep, and soon.’
Some Elks Lodges glitter like country clubs; this one used to be a motel with a pancake house attached. In the parking lot, stretching after the hot drive, there is a pretty girl in a black dress. Not one of you. But she must be, no one but your party, the party assembled for your uncle’s funeral,…
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘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.
‘Characteristically my wife refused to be drawn into the situation while I became obsessed with it.’
Americans, speaking of foreign lands, often say, 'It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.'
‘ My stunningly crummy apartment–there were big holes in the walls and I lay awake nights worrying about how they got there’.
‘None of these high-falutin pansy-ass would-be 'technologies' are going to save literature.’
‘North by Northwest isn't a film about what happens to Cary Grant, it's about what happens to his suit.’
‘Even astronauts describe / our air as thick enough to slice / and spread on toast for breakfast.’
