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Dear Lorraine, I love how inconclusive your portrait of a 1950’s working-class African American family is in A Raisin in the Sun (1959) – the way it…… Read more “It isn’t a circle–it is simply a long line”
Tag: Modern Classics
What would you do if you broke bread and blood came out?
Dear Gayl, In Eva’s Man (1976), we follow Eva Medina Canada, a 43-year-old woman who has been convicted for murdering her lover, Davis Carter, by poisoning him with…… Read more “What would you do if you broke bread and blood came out?”
Something that was unassailable and inviolable
Dear Netty, The Seventh Cross (tr. Margo Bettauer Dembo, 2018. Original: Das siebte Kreuz, 1942) starts and ends at the same point – but, in the span…… Read more “Something that was unassailable and inviolable”
How can you lose something that’s growing within you, like a tree?
Dear Karin, Crisis (tr. Amanda Doxtater, 2020. Original: Kris, 1934) is a book that resists being defined, a book that resists solidifying into a unified form of…… Read more “How can you lose something that’s growing within you, like a tree?”
Not everyone is true enough to hear the truth,
Dear Karin, Reading Kallocain (2019, tr. David McDuff. Original: 1940) feels very much like taking a small dose of Kallocain: it grows on us, building from the…… Read more “Not everyone is true enough to hear the truth,”
Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board
Dear Zora, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) follows a woman’s emotional journey which reads almost like an odyssey – a series of incidents through which the…… Read more “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board”
Some strange and fundamental innocence
Dear Gamel, One Way of Love – ways of love, one-way love, love’s way, way too much love, on one’s way to love. What am I to…… Read more “Some strange and fundamental innocence”
The salvage of memory
Dear Dorothy, Can one violate a memory by trying too hard to remain loyal to it? At the beginning of your novella Olivia (1949), you offer us…… Read more “The salvage of memory”
Appearances, she knew now, had a way sometimes of not fitting facts
Dear Nella, Passing (1929) is a book about being labelled, being defined by other people based on what they see (and on the prejudices they carry). It…… Read more “Appearances, she knew now, had a way sometimes of not fitting facts”
A confused consciousness of untouched treasures
Dear André, The Immoralist, tr. Dorothy Bussy (1930. Original: L’Immoraliste ,1902) is framed as your protagonist’s confession, as he tells the tale of his moral downfall to…… Read more “A confused consciousness of untouched treasures”
Like an image made of snow
Dear Edith, In The Age of Innocence (1920), you manage to do, on the level of writing, the same thing you set out to do on the…… Read more “Like an image made of snow”
The alphabet of my childhood
Dear Hella, Running just beneath the nostalgic waters of The Black Lake (tr. Ina Rilke, 2012. Original: Oeroeg, 1948), there is a disturbing current of tainted innocence: at…… Read more “The alphabet of my childhood”
What you call sin I call the great spirit of love
Dear Christa, This story seems to have had many lives. It started as a play, first performed in 1930, in Leipzig, as Ritter Nérestan (“Knight Nérestan”), and…… Read more “What you call sin I call the great spirit of love”
You’re neither unnatural, nor abominable, nor mad
Dear John, Is The Well of Loneliness (1928) the most depressing queer novel ever written? Judging by its contenders in early twentieth-century fiction, it can be tough to…… Read more “You’re neither unnatural, nor abominable, nor mad”
The most wonderful thing in the world must be to be a childless widow
Dear Elizabeth, Irony is your plaything in Diary of a Provincial Lady (1930), to the point where it starts to be slightly subversive. Written as a series…… Read more “The most wonderful thing in the world must be to be a childless widow”
Impossible to get out of it
Dear Carmen, In Nada, tr. Edith Grossman (2007. Original: Nada, 1944), we have a labyrinth of haunted characters confined in a haunting house in a city haunted…… Read more “Impossible to get out of it”
What if mothers refused to deny their womanhood
Dear Sibilla, A Woman, tr. Rosalind Delmar (1980. Original: Una donna, 1906) is a disturbing novella where rape, depression, suicide, adultery, and domestic violence are packed in…… Read more “What if mothers refused to deny their womanhood”
And she listened to the pounding of her heart
Dear Lydia, From the beginning, we already know that we are in for a train wreck with Sofia Petrovna (1994, translated by Aline Worth, emended by Eliza…… Read more “And she listened to the pounding of her heart”
