‘The Dobermann Club was run by a strong-voiced ex-army man who brooked no nonsense.’
It seems now like a different me, the years I spent with Martin, a Dobermann dog, and before he came, another me; it is a new me now, once again, writing this. I would have been dead long ago had I continued to live the way I had before he came. I think someone would have murdered me, given how I dr…
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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.
‘Question: ‘What do a Trabant and a condom have in common?’ Answer: ‘Both decrease the pleasure of the ride.’’
Durs Grünbein introduces photography by Martin Roemers.
‘Up on the light box on the wall are the scans of Gary’s brain, bone white standing out against smoked grey.’
John Niven remembers the last days of his brother, Gary.
‘It was a peculiar, alopecic landscape of hummocks and gullies, with patches of grass growing on what looked like white earth, and rarely a soul to be seen.’
A short story by Jianan Qian on stray dogs, desperation and re-education in rural China during the Cultural Revolution.
‘I imagine that each of my migrant forebears needed a bit of help on each arrival, a bit of human decency’
‘It wasn’t that he didn’t have a name, only that he was having difficulty locating it.’
