The Four-Gated City, by Doris Lessing
Martha's lost her mind.
Lynda’s was already gone.
Meanwhile, Francis copes.
Mark holes up in his study,
pondering the world’s demise.
♦ ♦ ♦
The Story of My Wife: The Reminiscences of Captain Storr, by Milan Füst*
Captain Jacob Storr
marries Lizzy on a dare.
She’s a Frenchwoman.
Jacob thinks she’s unfaithful.
He ties himself up in knots.
* Translation of A feleségem törtenete from the Hungarian by Ivan Sanders
♦ ♦ ♦
Two Serious Ladies, by Jane Bowles
Mrs. Copperfield
takes a trip to Panama,
hoping to “linger
there awhile,” then “penetrate
into the interior.”
♦ ♦ ♦
The Plague Sower, by Gesualdo Bufalino*
“What sad days those were,
the happiest of my life,”
says the narrator
from a sanitorium
in beautiful Palermo.
* Translation of Diceria dell’Untore from the Italian by Stephen Sartarelli (in the UK, the translation is titled The Plague-Spreader’s Tale)
♦ ♦ ♦
Wild Card, by Assumpta Margenat*
Rossi Olivan
hates her dead-end job. One day
she hatches a plan
for embezzlement. She brings
her sister in on the grift.
* Translation of Escapa’t d’Andorra from the Catalan by Sheila McIntosh
♦ ♦ ♦
Angels on Toast, by Dawn Powell
Baby is seated
at her table on the porch
eating her supper
with her best friends forever,
Stuffed Bunny and Krazy Kat.
♦ ♦ ♦
Doctor Slaughter, by Paul Theroux*
Powerful Lauren!
Her talent for pleasing men
is phenomenal,
and she makes it look easy
because she’s a willing slave.
* Doctor Slaughter is one of two novellas (the other is Doctor DeMarr) included in the volume titled Half Moon Street. The first printing of the Washington Square Press trade paperback edition (1986) exemplifies the type of small but annoying error that can creep into a book after the publisher’s editorial department has passed the project on to a production department where incompetents take it upon themselves to alter digital proofs without bothering to clear the changes with the book’s editor. Throughout the recto running heads in Doctor DeMarr, the protagonist’s name is spelled DOCTOR DE MARR. What’s worse, most readers who notice the unwarranted extra space will probably blame the editor. Arguably, the error could have been caught and corrected by the proofreader—but, again, it’s at least equally likely that it was introduced at the very last minute by the production department, after the page proofs left the proofreader’s hands. J’accuse, goddammit.
♦ ♦ ♦
A Sport and a Pastime, by James Salter
Unreliable
narrator. A voyeur, too,
in his mind, at least,
and his imagination
serves up quite the steamy tale.
♦ ♦ ♦
The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, by Tom Spanbauer
“I just met a man
who knew my mother,” Shed says.
Ida looks at him.
“Shed,” she says, “don’t get me wrong . . .
Lots of men knew your mother.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Dra—, by Stacey Levine*
Dra— will need to choose
what kind of job she should take.
That will be easy,
she thinks. Poor fearful Dra—. She
has another think coming.
* Stacey Levine is an inventive and somewhat undervalued writer. I can’t claim to know her but used to see her often enough to say hello while visiting a friend who shared a hallway with her in a rambling gray house converted into apartments at 11th and Harrison on Seattle’s Capitol Hill.
♦ ♦ ♦
The Beginning of Spring, by Penelope Fitzgerald
What a mess! Frank Reid
—abandoned, with three children,
by his wife, Nellie—
writes to her repeatedly
but never gets a reply.
♦ ♦ ♦
The Sandman, by Miles Gibson
“Sure, I like women,”
says the serial killer.
“Mom was a woman.
But I would prefer not to,
you know, get involved with you.”
♦ ♦ ♦
The Malady of Death, by Marguerite Duras*
You wake her up. You
ask if she’s a prostitute.
She shakes her head. You
ask her why she accepted
the deal, and all the paid nights.
* Translation of La maladie de la mort from the French by Barbara Bray
♦ ♦ ♦
The Fall of Valor, by Charles Jackson*
John Grandin: husband,
father, upright citizen.
1946.
On a family vacation,
John meets a handsome marine.
* Charles Jackson’s first novel, The Lost Weekend, served as the basis for the 1945 film of the same title, directed by Billy Wilder and starring Ray Milland and Jane Wyman. The movie was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won four—best picture, best director, best actor, and best adapted screenplay (by Wilder and Charles Brackett).
♦ ♦ ♦
Boy Genius, by Yongsoo Park
Boy Genius punches
his friend Rex square in the face.
“What’s wrong with you, man,”
says Rex, bleeding from the mouth,
“there are folks here with cameras.”
♦ ♦ ♦
An Apprenticeship or The Book of Delights, by Clarice Lispector
Somehow she has learned
no day is ordinary,
and it is her lot
to suffer through every day
or to take pleasure in it.
* Translation of Uma Aprendizagem ou O Livro dos Prazeres from the Portuguese by Richard A. Mazzara and Lorri A. Parris. Note that Lispector’s Brazilian publishers deferred to her preference for a more English‑adjacent title-capitalization style than is generally the rule in the Romance languages.
♦ ♦ ♦
The Pegnitz Junction, by Mavis Gallant*
Herbert and Christine
get a very early start.
Herbert is grumpy.
He turns to Christine and says,
in French, “You are overdressed.”
* The French-Canadian writer Mavis Gallant lived most of her adult life in Paris. Her name and address were listed in the phone book, so I stopped by one day in 1990 and left a note of appreciation with her building’s concierge. Some weeks later, back home in Seattle, I received a package from 14 rue Jean Ferrandi containing a warm handwritten letter and a signed copy of Gallant’s first novel, Green Water, Green Sky. Of course I still have the book, with her letter tucked inside. “The esteem of a poet,” she wrote, was “justification” for whatever sacrifices had come with her life as a writer of fiction. She closed with these words: “I wish you the best of luck—the best of poems.”
What an extraordinary gift from Mavis Gallant! You do write the best of poems, and I feel lucky to know you.
Brilliantly done!