Explore essays and memoir
The Survivals of Lafcadio Hearn
Kenny Fries
‘Did Hearn feel comfortable in Japan because being a foreigner overshadowed his physical difference?’
Out of the Cell
Pico Iyer
‘I was inside a silence that was not an absence of noise so much as the living presence of everything I habitually walked – or sleep-walked – past.’
Tech Sociopaths | Discoveries
Josie Mitchell
A round-up of great writing from around the web – links from the Granta editors.
Water, Water, Everywhere
Darrell Hartman
Darrell Hartman on water: from diving to climate change, hurricanes Irma and Harvey to the advent of ‘Blue Mind’.
Second Mother
Sinéad Gleeson
‘The cortex shrinks where the cells used to be. The spaces in between expand. Islands in the sea of the mind. An archipelago of the former self.’ Sinéad Gleeson on Alzheimer's disease.
If Mother’s Happy
Kathleen McCaul Moura
‘Towards the end of my pregnancy, like many women, my emotions were taut, stretched thin like the skin round my middle.’
Godzilla and Sadism | Discoveries
Josie Mitchell
Godzilla, Kathy Acker, Roald Dahl, Frank Bidart and a tribute to John Ashbery in this week's Discoveries – a round-up of writing by the Granta editors.
The Fashion of Kathy Acker
Chris Kraus
An extract from Chris Kraus’s new biography, After Kathy Acker.
Chris Kraus on Kathy Acker
Chris Kraus & Josie Mitchell
Chris Kraus discusses her new biography, After Kathy Acker, which looks at the life and work of the artist twenty years after her death.
Comfort Woman
Erika Krouse
Erika Krouse on her work as a private investigator. ‘An escort service was providing prostitutes for football recruits, directly solicited by the university.’
Hallelujah! A Brief History of Bombing People
Ben Mauk
Ben Mauk on the West’s longstanding love of missiles, drones, bombs and nukes.
Desire | State of Mind
Andrea Stuart
‘My burgeoning sense of my own attractiveness, so fragile and recently developed, withered in this less than fertile ground.’
Possessed | State of Mind
Jules Montague
‘I am neither fully awake nor entirely asleep. In fact, I wonder if I am even alive.’
Pop-Up People
Peter Pomerantsev
We are living through a period of pop-up populism, where each political movement redefines ‘the Many’ and ‘the People’, where we are always reconsidering who counts as an ‘insider’ or an ‘outsider’, where what it means to belong is never certain.
Would You Care to Enlarge on That? | Discoveries
Josie Mitchell
Once a fortnight, we make a shameless plea for your elusive attention by sharing our favourite links from across the web.
Nothing to be afraid of | State of Mind
Anil K. Seth
‘Life in the first person is both magical and terrifying. But it is circumscribed.’ Anil K. Seth on the ties between our brains, bodies and consciousness.
Soon Comes Night
Ekow Eshun
‘I’d become so used to hiding away inside myself I couldn’t respond with any spontaneity. I was stuck in the shallows of my emotions.’ Ekow Eshun on success, night terrors and therapy.
Introduction
Sigrid Rausing
‘What’s in a state of mind? How do we describe emotions, or the complex relationship between individuals and the state?’
Notes on a Suicide
Rana Dasgupta
‘The problem was that, for the most part, it did not matter how widely broadcast your discontent was: no one cared.’
One Picture, A Thousand Words
Charles Glass & Don McCullin
‘I think they are not on the right path. It’s wrong. What they are doing is wrong.’
Out of the Cradle
John Barth
‘What had formerly been a sedative, a tranquilizing soporific, had morphed into a facilitator of reflection, contemplation, deliberation, even inspiration.’
A Mingling | State of Mind
Siri Hustvedt
‘My empathy may become a vehicle of insight for me and therefore help me to help you or it may debilitate me altogether, make me so sad I am no good to you whatsoever.’
Salvage
Reynaldo Rivera & Chris Kraus
‘Throughout the 1980s and 90s, Reynaldo photographed his world, a world that no longer exists in LA.’ Photographs by Reynaldo Rivera, introduced by Chris Kraus.
The Recall of Herman Harcourt
Colin Grant
‘I had the queer feeling of looking into a mirror of the projected future, of perhaps seeing how easily his fall could be a rehearsal for my own.’
Cyprus United
Joe Dunthorne
‘The idea that football might provide an opportunity to overcome our dumber instincts seemed ridiculous now: football was a chance to set our idiocy free.’
Monster | State of Mind
Margo Jefferson
‘Today’s a day for you to feel blocked and impeded; a coward in work and love; resenting duty; suspecting pleasure.’
Coming Home to the Counter-Revolution
Jack Shenker
‘My Cairo is an inverted city, one that wears its innards above the skin.’
Imagined Memories
Francesca Todde & Nuar Alsadir
‘The creation of a screen memory is an encoding process: the screen retains all that is important from the past, but in encrypted form.’ Nuar Alsadir introduces the photographs of Francesca Todde.
Gay and Depressed | State of Mind
Andrew Solomon
‘It would be a bit more tolerable if we lived in a society that didn’t blame depression on its victims.’
