City Boy
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The Last Modernist
Chris Petit
‘If there were any sense of cultural justice in this country, the Westway – that chunk of concrete modernism – would be renamed after J.G. Ballard.’
Original Message
Austin Grossman
‘So tomorrow we might be on the same side. Unless you’re a triple agent, in which case we already were on the same side.’
Lost and Found
Je Banach
‘And yet, despite the overwhelming evidence of Lamb’s influence on contemporary writing, the nineteenth-century superstar has been largely ignored and mostly forgotten.’
A letter from Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro
The letter that accompanied Ishiguro’s first submission to Granta.
Susan Orlean and Saïd Sayrafiezadeh in Conversation
Saïd Sayrafiezadeh & Susan Orlean
Susan Orlean and Saïd Sayrafiezadeh discuss the difficulties of turning personal narratives into book-length projects.
Subject+Object
Jan Morris
‘The sea runs through our house – not literally, of course, but metaphorically, or perhaps emotionally.’
Among the Pipemen
Andrew Martin
‘It was as though, after a period of wariness, my pipe had warmed to me.’
Censored
Bruce Connew
‘It was an isolated incident, and there had been no official or unofficial communication about it.’
The Silkworms
Janet Frame
‘Nothing has changed, Edgar said. What new event is written into their history? None. Where is their future? Nowhere. Are they against or for progress? It was dark when Edgar took the box outside down to the rubbish heap and sprinkled the dead moths upon the ashes of the diseased pawpaw.’ Janet Frame on an unsettling natural process.
Keeping it in the family
Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
‘He had abandoned me, after all, when I was nine months old, mostly so that he could devote his time, energy and money to the cause of workers’ revolution.’
Ablutions
Patrick deWitt
An animated video including a reading from Patrick deWitt’s novel Ablutions.
Hal Crowther | Portrait of My Father
Hal Crowther
‘Only rarely and providentially do the vices of the fathers fail to be visited on the sons.’
Agnés
René Belletto
I met Agnès Magellan (a distant relative of the discoverer of new worlds? No, though...
Christopher Sorrentino | Portrait of My Father
Christopher Sorrentino
‘Those who strongly resemble one parent will recall the unsettling feeling of gazing into old photos and seeing, in relation to themselves, not the remote similarity of the grown-up sitting across the dinner table, but an exact likeness.’
Keeping it in the family
Claire Vaye Watkins
‘My father first came to Death Valley because Charles Manson told him to.’
Two Poems
Jack Gilbert
‘Loneliness is the mother’s milk of America. / The heart is a foreign country whose language none / of us is good at. ’
Alexander Chee | Portrait of My Father
Alexander Chee
‘He left for the US while his father was away on business so he couldn’t stop him.’
Onboard the US Coast Guard Cutter Dallas
Michael Peel
Photographs from onboard the US Coast Guard Cutter Dallas.
Paradox of Plenty
Michael Peel
‘The blend of volatile domestic politics and geostrategic oil interests is at best opaque and at worst thoroughly corrosive of all involved.’
Jess Row | Portrait of My Father
Jess Row
‘Settled and habit-prone, he nonetheless loves to see new life springing up – and, in this case, dropping right into his arms.’
Chloe Aridjis | Portrait of My Father
Chloe Aridjis
‘My father has always said that he was born twice.’
Benjamin Anastas | Portrait of My Father
Benjamin Anastas
‘For years when I was growing up, I passed underneath this double-nude every time I climbed up or down the stairs in my father’s house.’
Lê Thi Diem Thúy | Portrait of My Father
Lê Thi Diem Thúy
‘He believes there is a future for us somewhere. When he smiles like that, who can tell him otherwise?’
Maud Newton | Portrait of My Father
Maud Newton
‘Exactly how long the prostitute, unbeknownst to my father, stayed at our house and slept in my bed is hard to gauge.’
Rabih Alameddine | Portrait of My Father
Rabih Alameddine
‘I come from a family that hangs pictures of family on its walls.’
Gary Shteyngart | Portrait of My Father
Gary Shteyngart
‘I am fourteen years old and this is the only time I have ever successfully driven a car in my entire life.’
