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← Back to all issuesGranta 104: Fathers
Winter 2008
Granta 104, new editor Alex Clark’s first issue, goes in search of fathers. We find David Goldblatt facing up to his late father’s unfinished paperwork, Siri Hustvedt probing the complexities of family ties and an arresting portrait of his father’s determination to buck convention by Ruchir Joshi. Francesca Segal revisits the Brooklyn of her father’s youth and finds it radically altered, Benjamin Markovits speculates on the strange relationship between the American coach and his protégés and there’s new fiction from James Lasdun, Emma Donoghue, Daniyal Mueenuddin and Kirsty Gunn.
From this Issue
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Editor’s Letter: The men who made us
Alex Clark
‘Time comes round and takes your stories.’
Poetry|Granta 104
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Subject+Object: The fount of all smoky wisdom
Will Self
‘To explain what I now feel for the pipe I must paraphrase the writer Robert Stone’s remarks on hard drugs: I admire it from afar.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Olga Grushin | Portrait of My Father
Olga Grushin
‘Things that aren’t done right away are never done.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Doing the Paperwork: Life in the aftermath of a violent death
David Goldblatt
‘If the pressure of their life didn’t kill her it made the fight too hard.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Portrait of My Father
Ali Smith
‘What you do is, you go up to it, and touch it.’
Fiction|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Fiction|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Caterpillars
James Lasdun
‘But he had engulfed her somehow; taken up residence in her imagination like some large, dense, intractable problem that had been given to her to solve.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Portrait of My Father
Joseph O’Neill
Joseph O'Neill charts his father's chronology.
Fiction|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Fiction|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Provide, Provide
Daniyal Mueenuddin
‘You buy me things and then later you’ll think you bought me. I was never for sale.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Portrait of My Father
Adam Mars-Jones
‘I put my trophy on a high shelf, and at some stage laid it face down.’
Fiction|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104
Tracing Puppa
Ruchir Joshi
‘Also, at core, he was a theatre man, an actor, and he had the confidence of the genuine performer – ‘life makes you go through many roles and you have to act them with style!’’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Fiction|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
In My Father’s Footsteps
Francesca Segal
‘The two monoliths that dominated my father’s identity – the peak and the trough of his life – were Love Story and Parkinson’s disease.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Portrait of My Father
Jon McGregor
‘He must have taken thousands of services in that time, but this still feels like the holiest thing he’s ever done.‘
Fiction|Granta 104
Fiction|Granta 104
Lessons
Justin Torres
‘We were six snatching hands, six stomping feet; we were brothers, boys, three little kings locked in a feud for more.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 104![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Portrait of My Father
Jonathan Lethem
‘I wasn’t interested in childhood, I wanted to hang out with these guys.’
The Online Edition
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Keeping it in the family
Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
‘He had abandoned me, after all, when I was nine months old, mostly so that he could devote his time, energy and money to the cause of workers’ revolution.’
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Hal Crowther | Portrait of My Father
Hal Crowther
‘Only rarely and providentially do the vices of the fathers fail to be visited on the sons.’
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Christopher Sorrentino | Portrait of My Father
Christopher Sorrentino
‘Those who strongly resemble one parent will recall the unsettling feeling of gazing into old photos and seeing, in relation to themselves, not the remote similarity of the grown-up sitting across the dinner table, but an exact likeness.’
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Keeping it in the family
Claire Vaye Watkins
‘My father first came to Death Valley because Charles Manson told him to.’
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Alexander Chee | Portrait of My Father
Alexander Chee
‘He left for the US while his father was away on business so he couldn’t stop him.’
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Jess Row | Portrait of My Father
Jess Row
‘Settled and habit-prone, he nonetheless loves to see new life springing up – and, in this case, dropping right into his arms.’
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Chloe Aridjis | Portrait of My Father
Chloe Aridjis
‘My father has always said that he was born twice.’
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Benjamin Anastas | Portrait of My Father
Benjamin Anastas
‘For years when I was growing up, I passed underneath this double-nude every time I climbed up or down the stairs in my father’s house.’
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Lê Thi Diem Thúy | Portrait of My Father
Lê Thi Diem Thúy
‘He believes there is a future for us somewhere. When he smiles like that, who can tell him otherwise?’
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Maud Newton | Portrait of My Father
Maud Newton
‘Exactly how long the prostitute, unbeknownst to my father, stayed at our house and slept in my bed is hard to gauge.’
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Rabih Alameddine | Portrait of My Father
Rabih Alameddine
‘I come from a family that hangs pictures of family on its walls.’
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Gary Shteyngart | Portrait of My Father
Gary Shteyngart
‘I am fourteen years old and this is the only time I have ever successfully driven a car in my entire life.’
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Why Updike Matters
Joseph O’Neill
‘The death of John Updike is an instant literary disaster.’
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Jim Shepard | Portrait of My Father
Jim Shepard
‘His solution was to do everything that was humanly possible for those he loved, without any sense that he was owed anything in return.’
In Conversation|The Online Edition
Rewriting the Rules of the Game
Ian Leslie
Ian Leslie on Barack Obama's election in 2008 and forthcoming administration.
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Lost in Translation
Daniel Alarcón
‘It’s about the music of it. “It’s Hollywood,” Mario said, and assured me the same is true of political speech-making.’
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Voting in Vegas
‘‘Can your candidate raise the dead?’ she asked.’
In Conversation|The Online Edition
Ruchir Joshi | Interview
Ruchir Joshi
Writer and filmmaker Ruchir Joshi on his essay ‘Tracing Puppa’, Calcutta and his dreams of writing for Granta.
In Conversation|The Online Edition
Soumya Bhattacharya | Interview
Soumya Bhattacharya & Roy Robins
‘The emotion and the impulse of fiction is autobiographical, but the events never are.’
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Saved to Drafts
ZZ Packer
‘I know you’ll make the right choice; even if you don’t, you’re still beloved family.’