ELAINE MAY DIDN’T SET OUT to become a director. What she really wanted to do was write. Her first film, A New Leaf, came about partly because it was 1968 and Paramount knew it would look good to hire a woman director. And partly because May wouldn’t sell her script without being guaranteed director approval—the […]
AVRIL HORNER BEGINS A Savage Innocence, the first biography of the English novelist Barbara Comyns, with the story of her parents’ non-courtship. Once upon a time, a mustachioed man named Albert Bayley was visiting a cottage his parents rented out to a widow named Annie Fenn. Playing in the garden was Annie’s daughter Eva. Albert watched the ten-year-old girl skip around and before leaving informed Annie that once her daughter could cook, he would marry her. At the wedding, ten years later, Eva was already five months pregnant. According to Bayley family lore, Annie permitted the marriage because Albert offered
OTHER THAN BEING among the moneyed elite, what do Gwyneth Paltrow, Joe Rogan, and Laird Hamilton have in common? To various degrees, they all espouse the teachings of Wim Hof, a jolly Dutchman better known as “The Iceman” for feats like climbing Mount Kilimanjaro shirtless, running a half marathon barefoot across ice and snow, running a full marathon across the Namibian desert without breaking for water, and generally exhorting the public to understand that wearing a T-shirt out in winter while saying you just don’t get cold is more than manboy behavior. For Hof, it’s the secret to the good
IT IS TECHNICALLY POSSIBLE to write about Sheila Heti’s new novel, Pure Colour, by following the rising action. Such a review might track Heti’s main characters—father and daughter—through his death, her long mourning, their reunion in a leaf (it’s a sort of limbo), and her learning to live without him. The idea would be to shepherd readers through the novel by focusing on its most legible story line, in the hopes of making it all make sense. At the end, three or four sentences would remain to pronounce one or two judgments on how Heti perverts or expands the nature
THE UNNAMED NARRATOR of Lauren Oyler’s debut novel is an ex-blogger. She delivers hard truths about what she reads online: popular tweets and think-pieces alike are “aimed not at clawing for some difficult specificity but at reaffirming a widespread but superficial understanding.” Fake Accounts details her pivot to clawing, and to fiction; she is writing a semiautobiographical novel of hyperspecific circumstances, having recently discovered that her boyfriend, Felix, peddles anti-Semitic conspiracy theories via Instagram. Soon after, he dies. She gets the news at the Women’s March in Washington, DC, where she’s been biding her time at the dawn of the
In Andrew Martin’s new story collection, we’re with the critics, who are also writers, who often don’t write anything at all. Like Derek, who peaks hate-skimming a novel by the sometime-boyfriend of Violet, a member of his War and Peace reading group: “First paragraph: way too long. How many clauses did one man need? Last sentence: something about a Carolyn ‘emerging carelessly’ from a car. Indeed.” Derek throws the book in the trash, feels something. He is lashing out, having “been proven wrong in his interpretations of the text at every turn” over eight months of Tolstoy, and all in
Fiona Alison Duncan. Photo: Stefan Schwartzman The first page of Exquisite Mariposa, the debut novel of Canadian-American artist, writer, and organizer Fiona Alison Duncan, finds the narrator, also named Fiona, pitching a reality TV show about her new housemates (“It’s like The Real World meets Instagram.”). But it’s a nonstarter: Fiona respects and admires her fellow subletters, and soon realizes that packaging their image for profit is no way to treat people one respects and admires. At this point, she’s known them all for about a week, but they have a Connection. Reality is, the show never gets made,
Cyrus Grace Dunham. Photo: Sam Richardson Cyrus Grace Dunham’s memoir, A Year Without a Name, was written in real time over the course of two years, a name change, and what popularly constitutes a gender transition. The book emerged from a compulsive writing practice, an experiment in self-actualization that saw Dunham writing toward the version of himself he’d always fantasised about embodying. In spare language, Dunham writes through changing relationships, everyday setbacks, and resolutions. Dunham is acutely aware of what it’s like to be made a character of; one of the primary concerns of his book is how to
As they approached the station, Frank appeared a little nervous about something. The cause of his anxiety was apparent when the carriage stopped. He was the first to get out and the first to mount the platform. Somebody was evidently waiting for him. “To tell him about the life preserver—and maybe to deliver it!” Then he saw it. They began to drop swiftly, coming ever closer to the field. And then they set down, safe and unmolested. It struck even through Landor's pain-blurred brain that it was odd. But the few faculties he could command still were all engaged in keeping himself in the saddle until he could reach his own house, where Ellton and Felipa were waiting to get him to his room. It was failure, flat failure. The officers knew it, and the general knew it. It was the indefinite prolongation of the troubles. It was the ignominious refutation of all his boasts—boasts based not so much upon trust in himself, as on belief in the nature of the Apache, whose stanch champion he had always been. The storm grew every day more violent, and on the 11th of February, 1741, Sandys, who had acquired the name of "the Motion Maker," announced that he intended to make a motion for a direct condemnation of the Minister, and for his removal from office. On the following Friday Sandys made his threatened motion of condemnation. The surprise of the debate occurred when Shippen—"the thorough Shippen," as he was called—said that he would not join in the ruin of the assailed Minister. He declared that he never followed any dictates of self-interest, and cared little who was in or out, unless he could see a prospect of different measures; but that he regarded this movement only as the attempt to turn out one Administration in order to bring another in. He would therefore have no concern in it, and with that he withdrew, followed by thirty-four of his party. All Prince Frederick's servants and party also, except Lyttelton, Pitt, and Granville, left the House; so that, though there were more than five hundred members present at the commencement of the debate, when the question came to be put there were not above four hundred. Nevertheless, the whole army was dead beat and in the most deplorable condition when they entered Carlisle on the morning of the 19th. As the enemy did not appear, they rested that day and the following night, when they set forward again, leaving a fresh garrison. Cumberland was soon up before the walls, and they fired vigorously at him; but he sent off to Whitehaven and brought up six eighteen-pounders, with which, to their dismay, he began to play on their crumbling walls on the 29th. Next morning they hung out a white flag, and offered to capitulate; but Cumberland would hear of no terms except their surrendering on condition that they should not be put to the sword. At three o'clock in the afternoon both town and castle were surrendered, the garrison being shut up in the cathedral, and a guard set upon them. On the 3rd of January the Duke of Cumberland left the command to General Hawley, and hastened back to London, being summoned to defend the southern coast from a menaced landing of the French. A squad of Provost-Guards came up at a double-quick, deployed, surrounded the squad and began bunching the boys together rather roughly, using the butts of their muskets. "Well, from the talk that comes down from headquarters," said Si, "he may need every man. We've never had enough men so far. The rebels have always had more men than we did, and had the advantage of position. We only won by main strength and bull-headedness, and Rosecrans's good management. The rebels are straining every nerve to put up the fight o' their lives, and they say old Jo Johnston's got nearly as many men over there at Buzzard Roost as we have, and works that beat them we hustled Bragg out of around Tullyhomy." She raised her head and looked him full in the face, her eyes like a bright challenge. Her face was quite sober when she spoke. "I'm in Psych, but it's more than morale, Johnny. We're—always thinking up new ways to keep the little Alberts in their place. Put it that way. Though nobody's really come up with an improvement on the original notion." I push buttons and the machine obeys me, The rest of that day Reuben was a little happier. He felt comforted and stimulated, life was not so leaden. In the evening he worked a little in the hop-gardens. They were almost cleared now, and the smoke of the drying furnaces was streaming through the cowls of the oasts, shedding into the dusk a drowsy, malt-sweetened perfume. When the moon hung like a yellow splinter above Iden Wood, the pickers went home, and Reuben[Pg 326] turned in to his supper, which for the first time since Rose's flight he ate with hearty pleasure. "Hasten, master, open the door," answered the servitor. HoME里美尤利娅绝对美少女
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