If we imagine the circle described in Maracle’s Memory Serves, we could say that I have added something—if only a series of questions—to our shared effort to approach that which is “hidden and cherished” as we circulate the books we love, the essays we read. Washuta and Warburton, along with their contributors, have contributed a great deal to this effort. So listen carefully, be a witness; if you have something to add, Reader, add it. We can only try, essaying together.
When our edit was ready, we sent it for Ms. Ferrante’s approval. All correspondence with her was routed through her English-language publisher, who forwarded it to her Italian editors, who sent it along to her, then relayed her response. We never had direct contact with her. (Her celebrated translator, Ann Goldstein, who has also been interviewed in our section, works the same way — she has never met or interacted with Ms. Ferrante directly.)
A note came back explaining that, while she was happy overall, she had never before acquiesced to such extensive editorial intervention. She asked that ellipses be placed everywhere in the text where we had made an editorial change. This was an unusual request, one I had never encountered before.
With so much of our life now confined to our homes, it can feel like we’re in an alternate reality where we are the playthings, forever trapped in a dollhouse. So while you’re at it, this might be the perfect time to invest in some charming miniatures to dress up your living arrangement.
None of the alternative Americas envisioned by the conspicuously talented Matthew Baker in his new collection of short stories, “Why Visit America,” is implausible. That they don’t read as preposterous, even as they confound, is due to the author’s inventive play with form and his deeply affecting focus on human desire. On the surface they investigate the varieties of political leaning in today’s United States — late late-capitalist, careening toward authoritarianism, attempting to grapple with often imperfect solutions to systemic inequity — but their real intention is to convey what it feels like to be not a citizen but an individual.
What remained of a redbud still bloomed while oil
was pumped out of the prairie
below what they called a mountain