‘I began to feel almost ill with a kind of unpleasant pleasure, like being tickled.’
We must love nature, and we must rape nature for Satan! What would daylight be without the night? What would a clearing be without the woods? All your fairy dust, all your little white Christmas lights that twinkle, your Stardust Woman on the lite rock radio station–it would all be nothing without…
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.
‘We decided then to tell each other exactly how a typical fuck played out in our marriages. We couldn’t believe we’d never done this before.’
Fiction by Miranda July.
‘Diana saw that Lucy’s appeal was in the nostalgia of her looks: Hers was a teen beauty, at home nowhere more than in a miniskirt.’
Fiction by Lillian Fishman.
‘There’s something in her face. Adoration? I mean, she’s drunk. But she clearly has a thing for me.’
Fiction by Rachel Connolly.
‘One did not have high hopes for Gettysburg. Nor for Pennsylvania in general. Having grown up in Indiana, Diana felt she’d earned her condescension.’
Fiction by Jessi Jezewska Stevens.
‘If she really knew how beautiful she was, she would hardly have met up with him, so it was best not to tell her.’
Fiction by Lukas Maisel, translated by Ruth Martin.
‘I only stopped playing with him when he began biting the fingers of anyone who tried to pet him.’
