‘I have a proposition for you. From this moment on, you will do everything I tell you to do.’
An editor at Le Monde calls to invite me to write a short story for their summer series. These are supplements that appear on the weekends and enjoy a significant readership, it seems. Seven or eight thousand words on the subject of travel. My first impulse is to refuse, because I can’t come up wi…
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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.
‘Even today, she still speaks with emotion about Dorian, the transsexual so proud of her breasts, Diane, who weighed only sixty-five pounds, and Steven, who was so frightened of dying alone that Darcy wished she could promise to be with him when the time came.’ Emmanuel Carrère on addiction and poverty in an forgotten America.
‘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.
‘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.
‘How far can one deviate from the accepted pieties before one is kicked out?’
Brandon Taylor on naturalism and the future of fiction.
‘Leonard Lessing does not dream of Maxie Lemon, Maxim Lermontov, the hostage-taker.’
