‘I remember looking around me with approval that first night, and today, for all the changes which have transformed the world around it, Mrs Kawakamu's remains as pleasing as ever.’
I have never at any point in my life been very aware of my own social standing, and even now I am often surprised afresh when some event, or something someone may say, reminds me of the rather high esteem in which I am held. Just the other evening for instance I was down in our old pleasure district…
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‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’
Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
‘What is the read receipt for?’
Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
‘Like pretty much everyone who uses the internet, I have seen many terrible things that I did not search for and that I cannot unsee.’
Rosanna McLaughlin on what the internet thinks she wants.
‘I have a pathological addiction to the internet, which I indulge with the excuse of making art. It rarely translates to anything good and mostly leaves me overstimulated and afraid.’
Paul Dalla Rosa on excess and the internet.
‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’
Two poems by Sylvia Legris.
‘As it was, my grandfather began helping me to paint without my having to ask him.’
The letter that accompanied Ishiguro’s first submission to Granta.
‘How does a writer transform a familiar object or character into an instrument of horror?’
Helen Macdonald, Sin Blaché and Isabel Waidner on defamiliarisation, multiple dimensions and constructing characters
‘It is pleasant – to me, confusingly so.’
Michael Hofmann on returning to Germany.
‘I was stuck in Texas for a month. The days passed like slow-motion films.
