Spirits of Place

Sunday, September 21, 2008

"I wanted to be somewhere else. I wanted to be a dark blur, waiting to board the Normandy train, in the smoke-smudged St. Lazare station I wanted a ticket out of my life...
--Stuart Dybek, “Killing Time” Two prose nocturnes and a soldier’s story contemplate longing, loneliness and home.

Food Fight

Sunday, September 14, 2008

"Limp radicchio. Sorry fugu. A blasphemy of baby lamb lettuce frisee endive. A koulibiac made in hell.” For six months he knew her only by her byline, Willa Frank, and by the sting of her adjectives, the derisive thrust of her metaphors, the cold precision of her substantives.
--T.C. Boyle, “Sorry Fugu”

A luscious battle between a passionate chef and an implacable food critic.

Refresh, Refresh.

Sunday, September 07, 2008

"Black bags grew beneath the eyes of the sons and daughters and wives of Crow. Their shoulders stooped, wrinkles enclosing their mouths like parentheses. Our fathers haunted us. They were everywhere.
--Benjamin Percy, “Refresh, Refresh”

A haunting tale of sons without fathers, and selections from "Operation Homecoming," in which American soldiers fighting in the Middle East recount their experiences in fiction, poems, memoirs, and letters.