Issue Four
NOVEMBER 2023
Issue Four is blue – sky blue. In its pages: Schwarzeneggerology, Xi Jinping’s big beige books, peripheral Europe, art avant l’art, palindrome divas, medieval darlings, Jim Jarmusch baking a cake and S. Ansky sharing a secret from beyond the grave. Plus: some truly bad writing advice.
Two palindromes
→ Setting of the Sun at West Mountain / Puffing & panting ←→ Worm-eaten Rimbaud / Always knowing whom ←
Every end has a start
In 2005, Yamandú Roos embarked on the photographic project Europeans: one continent, forty countries, 65.000 kilometers.
The case of the missing elephant
On animal charisma and animal vengeance. What happens when an elephant goes missing a year after her death.
The original Dybbuk
A story about afterlife. « A saint! What do you mean he’s a saint! the scholar says. He’s a librarian! Are librarians saints? »
The big beige books
The most important unreviewed books of our times, reviewed. On Xi Jinping’s The Governance of China, Volumes I to IV
Trouble at work and home while my son is abroad
A story about living. « I have a family and I have a job and I have a teaching gig, and these things have me. »
Bad writing advice
Writing advice is everywhere. Some of it might even be good! But we were interested in the bad.
Europe disenchanted
A broad cast of characters who almost all speak to a solitary woe. This is Europe?
Forget your darlings
On memory palaces, medieval and modern. A medieval woman’s life would not have taken the form of a straight line.
Streuselkuchen
A story about coolness. « The phone rings. It is Jim Jarmusch, and he asks if I want to come over to his place. »
Schwarzeneggerology
On Arnold, action cinema & Übermenschlichkeit. « Arnold Schwarzenegger was action cinema’s Adamic man, alternately entering and exiting normal human time. »