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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

In this week’s Top 5, we’re sharing stories by Mark MacKinnon, Rachel Cusk, Carmen Maria Machado, Suketu Mehta, and an excerpt from Bill Hayes.

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The Trash Heap Has Spoken

Longreads Pick
Published: Feb 13, 2017
Length: 14 minutes (3,731 words)

Essay

Bowne Hall. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Bowne Hall. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Thursday in the Class With George

It was a cold, gray October morning, misty and drizzling, when I arrived at Syracuse University’s Bowne Hall, a handsome three-story brick building that first opened for classes in 1907. The Syracuse campus is postcard gorgeous; literally a city on a hill, with beautifully-tended grounds and fine Victorian buildings spread across acres of lawn. But Bowne 110 is as plain a classroom as you can imagine. There were standard-issue arm desks with molded plastic seats loosely arranged in a half-circle, facing a large chalkboard and desk. Classical musicians were rehearsing in a distracting manner next door; first tuning up and then practicing pretty loudly; nobody in class would pay them the slightest attention over the next three hours.

After a few minutes about about 15 students had assembled, all carrying backpacks heavy with books; a young man in a Mao cap; a woman in a striped shirt, who casually put her hair up in a bun before class began. The most fancifully dressed was a young woman in a button-up vintage wool vest and a boyish mint-green shirt, with a careful, tidily short haircut. Later I would speak with a number of them, including a wonderful young man recently returned from Iraq/Afghanistan who had just the wickedest sense of humor, and a beautiful “older” one of around 30, very gentle and delicate in her ways. Now they were all milling around, chatting, several finishing cups of steaming coffee or tea.

And then in came George, casually and plainly dressed—a soft black shirt with the top button undone, revealing a slender silver chain weighted with a pendant that I was too timid to ask about, and over that a heavy dark blue cotton zip-front sweater. He kibbitzed a little with this and that student. On television he comes off a little shy, but not here, in his element. Not that he looks so terrible in photographs or anything, but photographs don’t do Saunders justice; he’s very good-looking, approachable, lively, with an indefinably elegant way about him. We all arranged our effects—books, scarves, bags and coats, readied ourselves to converse about Chekhov. It changed my life.

George began by telling us about his own relationship to the Little Trilogy. He moves around constantly as he teaches, not in a theatrical way, but just from being so lively and animated in his thoughts.

I heard it for the first time when I was a student here; the first semester we were here. Tobias Wolff was around, but we weren’t in class with him. So, it was announced he was going to do a reading down at Syracuse Stage, but the day of the reading he was really sort of not feeling well. So instead of reading his own work, he read this whole trilogy… It was just incredible, you know. Just as he got to the end of “About Love” it started to snow in front of the big glass window.

So for me it was a huge moment, because I sort of knew Chekhov a little bit, and I’d always been vaguely bored by him. And when Toby read it, especially this first story, “The Man in the Shell,” it was so funny, you know, so something kind of opened up in my head about this relation between being humanly entertaining, and great literature. That was a big day. So this story, I think it’s almost impossible to get to the bottom of, but we’ll spend the whole three hours trying to.

In other words, these exact stories had been bred into his bones in this very place—and by Tobias Wolff, too. The stability and continuity described in these casual, homely opening remarks implied certain foundational values, I thought. A sense of order and artistry. Of permanence, too; of loyalty. Saunders met his wife Paula when they were fellow grad students here; he is very private about his personal life but he’s had a very happy marriage, it seems, and has two grown daughters; his whole life seems very much tied up in Syracuse. Class began with the understanding that we were taking part in a tradition, a ritual almost, and a history.

There was also an ambient atmosphere of luck, a continued quiet awareness of our good fortune, I thought, among all those present. There had been nearly six hundred applications for six places in the MFA program in 2013. Those selected spend three years in a space apart—like a twelfth house enclosure, if you’re into astrology—a place of reckoning.

But even at far humbler reaches than these, literature is a rarefied discipline. That is, you can’t be very concerned at all about literature if you’re struggling on the lower floors of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. If you were lucky enough to make it into a good college, maybe you’ve felt a little guilty about that luxury. Here you are, studying chemistry or government or history or geology or music or writing. Your life is totally saturated with privilege that you are told you must check. But no; there is no checking the priv. Not only have you got enough to eat, not only a clean, safe place to sleep every night, not only a hot shower every day and a place to do your laundry, but the time and space to read and think, develop goals for your life, be taught by wise and patient adults who wish only for your success.

Then let’s say you make it through undergrad and you decide that nothing else will do: you are going to get an MFA. There probably is not a lot of material “success” awaiting you in the field of creative writing, or in any of the fine arts. Maybe you will become the next Joshua Bell or David Foster Wallace. Or maybe you will teach. Maybe you will become a middle manager in a tech company. You may find fulfillment, or never find it, in any of these roles, and maybe you know that, too. You buy the lottery ticket. You come to Syracuse to learn to write from George Saunders, a very great writer. You are going to enter the most civilized confines that exist in the modern world. And here you will study Chekhov, who writes about: Peasants.

Among other things, obviously. In my three-hour window into this world I came to see literary practice as taught by George Saunders as almost like a priestly undertaking. It’s a path toward empathy and reconciliation as much as a matter of intellect or craftsmanship. It’s about the truth, and honors human impulses, ideas and personalities high and low. This sounds precious, I know. And it is. But it’s precious in both the dismissible way, and the literal way. Which I suspect is something Anton Chekhov meant for you to think about.

* * *

Syllabus

ENG 650 (Forms):
The Russian Short Story in Translation (for Writers)

Thursdays, 9:30 – 12:15, Bowne Hall 110

Office Hours: By appointment.

* * *

Ethos:

This class is intended not as a survey of the Russian short story, but rather as a chance to read (very closely) a selected number of great stories from that tradition, with an eye to craft. Our real topic is simply: the short story itself. How does a good story work? What do you value in a story? What we really want to accomplish is to improve your fiction. Exposure to these masterpieces, and the close analytical work we’ll do to try and understand their power, should, we hope, rub off on our own fictional efforts. As such, I’d like to err on the side of reading a smaller amount of text each week, so that our discussions will center on close line readings and study of fictional effects, rather than, say, larger historical or thematic concerns. We are basically just reading a number of amazing stories and trying to figure out how they work – and they happen to all be by a handful of great Russian masters, mostly from the 19th Century. We’ll read these authors in roughly chronological order. The reading assignments listed below are approximate – at the end of each class I’ll confirm or revise the following week’s assignment. So please don’t “read ahead” in the class – I’d like the reading to be done during the week before class, so your responses are fresh. In some cases we’ll only end up discussing one of the stories, but the other(s) will be useful for background. There are no texts on order for the class – I’ll provide the texts each week, either in hardcopy form or as (emailed) pdfs. But should you want to own good editions by these writers, I’d recommend the following, from which many of our translations come:

 

OPTIONAL Texts:

**The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol, translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky,
    Vintage Classics, ISBN 0-375-70615-1.

**The Best Short Stories of Dostoevsky, translated by David McDuff, Modern
    Library, ISBN 0-679-60020-5.

**Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude,
    Perennial Library, ISBN 0-06-083071-9.

**The Portable Chekhov, edited by Avrahm Yarmolinksy, the Viking Portable
    Library, ISBN 0-14-015035-8.

**Red Cavalry and Other Stories, translated by David McDuff, ISBN
    0-140-44997-3.

I’ll also bring in copies of alternate translations and supplementary materials.

 

Work: Each week I’ll expect you to hand in, at the beginning of class, a 3-5 page (typed) notebook entry per story, detailing your journey through the works in question. Please note that some weeks we will be reading more than one story; this means 3-5 pages per story. These entries can take any form you like, and can include sketches, musings, graphs – really, whatever authentically helps you take the story apart and come to an understanding of it that is meaningful to you and your artistic process. Things to avoid: sloppy musing, spacefilling, irrelevant dirgressions, undue pointless cleverness. Things to embrace: sincere questioning, structural examination, questions-to-self, questions to pose in class – really, anything that is based on specificity, detail, and close examination/reading of the story – I’m looking for evidence of deep engagement. These essays and your classroom participation will determine your grade. This reading load is relatively light for a graduate course, and I’m not asking for any term papers – so please do focus all of your energy on your essays and then on really pitching in during the discussions. I’ll read your papers every week, provide light comments, and get these back to you the following week.   What I’ve found is that these papers are a great way to make sure the classroom discussion gets up to the high ground quickly. All told, then, you’ll have approx 18 of these due (i.e., one per story), and I’m not going to be accepting late papers. So it’s essential that you get these done and hand them in at the end of each class. Otherwise, no credit. If you have an excused absence, I’ll accept the papers one week late.

 

Approximate Schedule:

AUG 29:     INTRO and CLASS OVERVIEW

SEPT 5:     TURGENEV: “The Singers”

SEPT 12:     GOGOL: “The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled…” +

“Nevsky Prospect”

SEPT 19:     GOGOL: “The Nose” + “The Overcoat”

SEPT 26:     DOSTOYEVSKY: “The Honest Thief,” + “The Christmas Tree and a Wedding,” + “The Peasant Marey”

OCT 3:     TOLSTOY: “The Devil” + “”Master and Man”

OCT 10:     TOLSTOY: “The Death of Ivan Ilych” + “Alyosha the Pot”

OCT 17:     No class.

OCT 24:     CHEKHOV: “In the Cart” + “The Darling”

OCT 31:     CHEKHOV: “The Man in a Shell” + “Gooseberries” + “About Love”

NOV 7:     CHEKHOV: “The Lady with the Pet Dog”

NOV 14:     CHEKHOV: “In the Ravine”

NOV 21:     POST-REVOLUTIONARY WRITERS TBD. (Babel, Sharlamov, Kharms, Krzhizhanovsky, et al)

NOV 28:     No Class – Thanksgiving Break

DEC 5:     POST-REVOLUTIONARY WRITERS TBD. (Babel, Sharlamov, Kharms, Krzhizhanovsky, et al)

* * *

A Shot in the Arm

Illustration by: Kjell Reigstad

Josh Roiland | Longreads | February 2017 | 14 minutes (3,710 words)

 

“Who’s sticking today?” the man asked.

He wore tan work boots and rough jeans. He told a friend in the waiting room that he had a couple hours off work and thought he’d stop in for some extra cash. The receptionist told him the names of that day’s phlebotomists. He paused. Sliding a 16-gauge needle into someone’s arm is tricky, and the man reconsidered. Instead of signing in, he announced to the room that he’d come back tomorrow and try his luck.

I’d driven 107 miles from my home in Bangor, Maine to the BPL Plasma Center in Lewiston to collect $50 for having my arm punctured and a liter of my plasma sucked out. The actual donation takes about 35 minutes, but the drive and its attendant wait makes for an eight-hour day. I clocked in for that trip five times this summer.

I’m a professor at the University of Maine. My salary is $52,000, and I am a year away from tenure. But like everyone else in that room, I was desperate for money. Read more…

What It’s Like to Lose Your Short-Term Memory

Illustration by Perrin

Christine Hyung-Oak Lee | Longreads | February 2017 | 18 minutes (4,276 words)

Longreads is proud to feature an exclusive excerpt from Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Life, the forthcoming memoir by Christine Hyung-Oak Lee. Lee’s story was first featured on Longreads in 2014, for her BuzzFeed essay, “I Had a Stroke at 33.”

***

Short-term memory dominates all tasks—in cooking, for instance: I put the water to boil in a pot on the stove and remember that the water will boil while I chop the onions. I will put the sauté pan on the stove to heat up the oil for the onions, and I will then put the onions, which I will remember I have chopped, into the oil, which I remember I have heated for the onions. I will then add tomatoes. While the onions and tomatoes cook, I will put pasta in the water, which I remember I have boiled. I will know that in ten minutes I will put the cooked pasta into the tomato and onion stir, and thus have a simple tomato pasta meal. Read more…

Practical Cartography: I Am Mapped, Therefore I Am

Cantino's map, one of the most important pieces of 16th century cartography. (Image in the public domain.)

Lois Parshley’s wide-ranging, fascinating story on mapping the unmapped — from black holes, to the bottom of the sea, to the populations of the Congo and Haiti — looks at not just the science of map-making, but the morality.

“I like maps,” Gayton says. “But really what I care about is equitable distribution of health care. As long as 1 billion people don’t have it, sooner or later it’ll come bite people in rich countries.” He scoffs at the idea that there are no blank spaces left on Earth. “Anyone who says the world is mapped, ask them to show you where the population of Congo are living. Ask them where the villages are. If they can do it, please let me know.”

To Gayton, it’s not an idle distinction. “When you have a place like South Sudan, where millions of people live and die without ever figuring in a database anywhere, their names will never be written down. There’s not a lot of dignity in that—to not be on the map is quite a powerful statement of uncaring.” That’s what Missing Maps is about. “We still don’t know who they are, but at least we know where their house is. At least the map actually contains them, rather than a blank wash of green,” Gayton says. “I tell people at mapathons sometimes, ‘That house you’re tracing right now, that hut—that’s the first time in the history of humanity someone cared enough about them to take note.’” Things don’t exist because we name them, but giving them a name engenders new meaning. At its most basic, to exist on a map is to have value.

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The 2017 National Magazine Award Winners: A Reading List

Credit: Keith Jenkins/Flickr

This year’s National Magazine Awards—otherwise known as the Ellies (or the award shaped like a modernist elephant)—was held at a luncheon Tuesday afternoon in New York. While the big titles, like New York, ESPN the Magazine, and the New York Times Magazine, held sway in several categories, there were some stunners among the honors, including Huffington Post Highline, Pacific Standard, California Sunday Magazine, and Eater. Mother Jones won the Ellie for “Magazine of the Year.” Read more…

Swan, Late

Illustration by Kjell Reigstad.

Irina Dumitrescu | Longreads | February 2017 | 23 minutes (5873 words)

 

“Perfect is boring.”
— George Balanchine

I discovered I couldn’t dance when I was ten years old. My parents had signed me up for a ballet course in Toronto with a dour, shriveled Romanian teacher, chosen no doubt because of our shared totalitarian traumas. In her class I felt uncoordinated, impossibly gawky. My clearest memory is of trying to accomplish a gentle downward sweep of the hand. My teacher performed the movement. As I attempted to imitate her, she said, over and over, “but do it gracefully!” I could not figure out how to do it gracefully. I could not even see the difference between her gesture and mine. I came to the logical conclusion: I was terminally ungraceful. In fact, I couldn’t dance at all.

I quit ballet. I did have to dance again when I took part in the yearly audition held by a local school for the arts. I was terrible at acting and drawing too, but the dance test was my Waterloo. A teacher demonstrated a complicated choreography at the front of the room while we waited patiently in rows. Then he gave us a cue, and as if by magic, all of the other children repeated the combination perfectly. I, on the other hand, was a mess of arms and legs and confused desperation. I managed with twisted precision to be always facing in the opposite direction from the other kids, stumbling into them dangerously.

My inability to dance became a matter of faith, something I believed in unquestioningly for the next two decades. But I did so with pride and stubbornness. Everything about ballet felt wrong to me: all that Pepto-Bismol pink, ribbons and tulle, polished princesses executing their steps in martial unison, tight little buns behind tight little faces. Ballet represented hard beauty, ungenerous towards human flaws or quirks. It was a tyranny of perfection.

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The Inner Tiny House Journey: Jay Shafer on Finding Meaning in Things

Mark Sundeen, writing for Outside, traveled to the National Tiny House Jamboree in Colorado Springs last summer and talked to some of the tiny house movement’s pioneers, including its “godfather” Jay Shafer. Over a cigarette break in the woods — away from all the tiny space swooners, wannabe-minimalists, and sales reps — Shafer tells him a bit about his design philosophy and the purpose of material objects.

Shafer was raised in a large suburban house in Orange County, California. “I never had a true sense of home,” he said. After attending the University of Iowa, he got a master’s in fine art in New York City. But urban life didn’t suit him. He returned to Iowa City, where he taught art, living in a pickup and later an Airstream. Although he considers himself secular, as an artist he was drawn to sacred symbols and icons. “I got tired of building shrines I couldn’t live in,” he said.

I asked him if he’d been on any of the tiny-house shows.

“I was on Oprah.”

“What was that like?”

“Like watching Oprah on television, but in 3-D.”

During a commercial, she told him that he had inspired her to get rid of one of her mansions. “I wish she would have said it on camera.”

Shafer went on to describe design in a language I had not heard at the Jamboree—or anywhere. “Integrity is my word for God,” he said. It was wrong to conceal structural elements or disguise materials, and purely ornamental features were like a comb-over. Both attempted to convince us that the homeowner (or the hair owner) felt secure but of course revealed insecurity. “My best designs come only when my ego gets out of the way, when the higher power flows through me.” He had a sense of humor about it all, too. “I spent weeks trying to design a dining table that would convert into a coffee table. Finally, I figured out that all I had to do was turn the thing on its side.”

He described himself as a “meaning addict,” always looking for higher significance in material objects. “A gate in a picket fence that opens onto a narrow path that leads through a yard to an open porch that covers a door,” he said, “is a set of symbols we recognize as signposts guiding us through increasingly private territory toward the threshold of someone’s clandestine world.”

I finally got it. I had not understood why Williams’s house felt so authentic while so many of the blocks on wheels felt awkward or false. This subculture, although it seemed to be about nifty gadgets and Murphy beds, was at its heart the expression of our longing to find our place in the universe, to become as beautiful and functional as nature itself.

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