‘My response to art was quick, metabolic and revelatory, while my response to sex was a muddle of delayed reactions and missed libidinal signals.’
A few weeks before the freshman semester at the School of Visual Arts in New York, I found a bachelor apartment (I loved the suave and manly sound of it) on East 12th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue. The basement windows were level with the sidewalk, the legs of pedestrians blurring past. If I pul…
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‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
David Gates and Bernard Cooper talk about their contributions to Granta 126: do you remember, untricky writing and purgatory mates.
‘They couldn’t put their finger on exactly what it was they craved, but they knew it was very different to what they had.’
Fiction by Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes.
‘The presence of another person at the scene is suggested. The image invites you to imagine their position and to mentally assume it.’
Photography by Debmalya Ray Choudhuri, introduced by John-Baptiste Oduor.
‘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.
‘I grew up thinking He was folded into her body, very gently, like when she folded sifted icing sugar into beaten egg white, those kinds of loving corners.’
