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← Back to all issuesGranta 171: Dead Friends
Spring 2025
In Granta 171: Dead Friends, contributors write about their departed mentors and friends.
Featuring Renata Adler on Hannah Arendt, Fernanda Eberstadt on Andy Warhol, Michel Houellebecq on Benoît Duteurtre, Tao Lin on Giancarlo DiTrapano, Aatish Taseer on V.S. Naipaul, as well as autobiography from Yasmina Reza and William Atkins on new developments in our disposal of the dead.
Fiction by Susie Boyt, Joshua Cohen, Marlen Haushofer and Gary Indiana.
Poetry by Anne Carson, Krystyna Dąbrowska, Audun Mortensen and Robert Walser.
And photography by Mark Cawson, aka Smiler, introduced by Iain Sinclair, as well as Ming Smith, with an introduction by Tobi Haslett.
Cover image by Nan Goldin, The Hug, New York City, 1980
From this Issue
Essays & Memoir|Granta 171
Essays & Memoir|Granta 171
Dead Friends
Thomas Meaney
‘Dead friends come to us unbidden – in unexpected moments, in dreams. They remain in conversation. In these pages, writers have transmitted the flickering aura of their departed friends.’
The editor introduces the issue.
Essays & Memoir|Granta 171
Essays & Memoir|Granta 171
Burning Mao
Fernanda Eberstadt
‘On 7 December 1976, I finally succeeded in pestering my parents into introducing me to Andy Warhol.’
Fernanda Eberstadt on her friendship with Andy Warhol.
Fiction|Granta 171
Fiction|Granta 171
Posterity
Joshua Cohen
‘The festival dedicated to his late father was scheduled to open tomorrow evening on the Mediterranean island of Midorca and the evening after that Acker was set to present his remarks at the Biblioteca Pública de Midorca.’
Fiction by Joshua Cohen.
Fiction|Granta 171
Fiction|Granta 171
All Being Well
Susie Boyt
‘Of course your head would get muddled with the other person’s at the end. It was just the practical side of “for better or for worse”. That was friendship so much more than marriage.’
Fiction by Susie Boyt.
Art & Photography|Granta 171
Art & Photography|Granta 171
Mark Cawson Lives
Mark Cawson & Iain Sinclair
‘In Smiler’s confrontational images, the dead outnumber the living.’
Iain Sinclair introduces Mark Cawson’s photography.
Essays & Memoir|Granta 171
Essays & Memoir|Granta 171
Nowhere
Yasmina Reza
‘I have no house, from time to time I dream of having one, not a holiday home but a house to bury myself in.’
Memoir by Yasmina Reza, translated by Alison L. Strayer.
Poetry|Granta 171
Poetry|Granta 171
When Rhinestones Star the Night and You Find Yourself Thinking Fondly of Dave Hickey
Anne Carson
‘Look, the / blessings should surprise you, not / the pain.’
Poetry by Anne Carson.
Fiction|Granta 171
Fiction|Granta 171
Remission
Gary Indiana
‘A drug friend could really be anybody.’
Fiction by Gary Indiana.
Poetry|Granta 171
Poetry|Granta 171
Watching, Content & Colombia
Audun Mortensen
‘I make a certain effort / to give my sister in Korea / the impression / that I am interested’
Poetry by Audun Mortensen.
Art & Photography|Granta 171
Art & Photography|Granta 171
The Conservation of Mass: On Resomation
William Atkins
‘If it has ever fallen to you to scatter someone’s ashes, especially those of someone you loved, you might share my sense of the process as tantamount to fly tipping, the stuff resembling nothing so much as cat litter.’
William Atkins on disposing of the dead.
Art & Photography|Granta 171
Art & Photography|Granta 171
Unruly Light
Ming Smith & Tobi Haslett
‘Some restless, formless element thrums deep within the portraits and stalks through every streetscape.’
Photography by Ming Smith, introduced by Tobi Haslett.
Poetry|Granta 171
Poetry|Granta 171
Note to Self & Gentle Rain
Robert Walser
‘Note to self: Take a walk / to go see Hermann Hesse’
Two poems by Robert Walser, translated by Damion Searls.
Fiction|Granta 171
Fiction|Granta 171
Killing Stella
Marlen Haushofer
‘I read somewhere that you can get used to anything, and habit is the strongest force in our lives.’
Fiction by Marlen Haushofer, translated by Shaun Whiteside.
Essays & Memoir|Granta 171
Essays & Memoir|Granta 171
Benoît
Michel Houellebecq
‘I’ll never be able to order an œuf mayonnaise in a restaurant without thinking of him – literature can do that, when the description is perfect.’
Michel Houellebecq on his friend Benoît Duteurtre.
Poetry|Granta 171
Poetry|Granta 171
Cell Phone
Krystyna Dąbrowska
‘Each time I’m in her country, my translator / lends me the phone of her dead husband.’
A poem by Krystyna Dąbrowska, translated from the Polish by Karen Kovacik.
In Conversation|Granta 171
In Conversation|Granta 171
This Very Complicated Cast of Mind
Renata Adler
‘I thought of her more as a sort of parental figure in the beginning. There was scolding.’
Renata Adler on her friendship with Hannah Arendt.
Essays & Memoir|Granta 171
Essays & Memoir|Granta 171
V.S. Naipaul: The Grief and the Glory
Aatish Taseer
‘To be taught by Naipaul would be an honour, but it also seemed to contain the risk of annihilation.’
Aatish Taseer on being mentored by V.S. Naipaul.
Essays & Memoir|Granta 171
Essays & Memoir|Granta 171
Gian
Tao Lin
‘I felt compelled to publish our potentially worrying, arguably unseemly texts, in which we discussed buying, selling, trading and using a broad assortment of illegal drugs’
Tao Lin on his friendship and correspondence with Giancarlo DiTrapano.
The Online Edition
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Los Angeles, Indiana
Jesse Barron
‘The material becomes a fable about Los Angeles, a city that is always watching itself watch itself.’
Jesse Barron on Los Angeles and Gary Indiana’s final novel.