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← Back to all issuesGranta 41: Biography
Autumn 1992
Is it merely a form of gossip (the affairs, the drinking, the public rows) or does it satisfy an important curiosity? Saul Bellow (on his father), James Atlas (on Saul Bellow), Gabriel García Márquez (on the mysterious Frau Frida), Lorna Sage, Louise Erdrich, Andrew Motion, and Luc Sante.
From this Issue
|Granta 41
Starting Out in Chicago
James Atlas
‘Dangling Man was his M.A., Bellow liked to say; The Victim was his Ph.D.‘
|Granta 41
When Did You Last See Your Father?
Blake Morrison
‘When did you last see your father? Was it when they burned the coffin? Put the lid on it? When he exhaled his last breath? When he last sat up and said something? When he last recognized me? When he last smiled? When he last did something for himself unaided?‘
|Granta 41
A very young Dancer
Todd McEwen
‘I have a snapshot of the two of us: late on a summer afternoon we're playing in an inflatable wading pool.‘
|Granta 41
The Names of Women
Louise Erdrich
‘Ikwe is the word for woman in the language of the Anishinabe, my mother's people, whose descendants, mixed with and married to French trappers and farmers, are the Michifs of the Turtle Mountain reservation in North Dakota.‘
|Granta 41
The Contents of Pockets
Luc Sante
‘Time in its passing casts off particles of itself in the form of images, documents, relics, junk.‘
|Granta 41
Breaking In
Andrew Motion
‘He dedicated The Less Deceived to her: it was the only collection of poems he dedicated to anyone.‘
|Granta 41
Among the Tulips
Richard Holmes
‘When young James Boswell arrived in Holland in August 1763 at the age of twenty-two, his first impulse was to commit suicide.‘
|Granta 41
A Colossal Hoard
Ian Hamilton
‘For James Boswell, admiration was a busy, intimate affair.’
|Granta 41
Life and Art
John Banville
‘He arrived in Paris for the first time huddled on a hay cart.’
|Granta 41
Death of the Author
Lorna Sage
‘Her genius for estrangement came out of a thin-skinned extremity of response to the circumstances of her life and to the signs of the times.’
