Doubly Obsessed with Time
And the April short story log
Reader Albert Hernandez checked in to let us know that a building from one of my dreams reminded him of the Amertech Building near where he grew up in Hialeah, FL.
In response to last week’s newsletter about The Clock at MoMA, Steve Cook recommended the book Timekeepers: How the World Became Obsessed with Time by Simon Garfield.
I planned to become doubly obsessed with time in NYC by reading Heidi Julavits’s The Folded Clock: A Diary (which I bought at a bookstore that seems to only play late-career Michael Jackson). I didn’t get a chance to read it on my trip, but I believe she’s trying to reclaim the feeling of a single day, as it felt in childhood.
Julavits thinks a lot about time. Here she investigates the cultural obsession with always being present: I guess I’m wary of the extent to which, now that it’s so widely sold and bought, the present, and the goal of living perpetually in it, might be misunderstood, or misused, or boiled down to nearly nonsense. To be forbidden, for the sake of your health, to exit the present might be a means of evading responsibility or consequence; to live in and for the present is to potentially exempt people from a continuum of cause and effect. To do this – to discourage people from linking the present to the past, and projecting into the future – is to create, paradoxically, an inescapable health risk.
Instead of Julavits, I ended up reading Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection. I am in awe of books that make me think: there is no way I could have written that. Latronico makes you care about characters, and makes me see myself in them at times, while using an indifferent, removed style. He explains how he learned to do it: I was trained by reviewing for the art magazine Frieze. I’d be giving my opinion on works of art and my editor would say: “No: describe the pieces in detail and make your opinion transpire from the way you describe them.”
While in NYC, I recommend carrying around a Fitzcarraldo paperback. I’ve read four every one has been great. More importantly, I’m convinced they made me look less of a tourist—even though they’re British editions.
April Story Log
I’ve been listing and sharing the short stories I read each month.
“Gifu” by K-Ming Chang
“The Locksmith” by Grey Wolfe LaJoie
“Debts” by Grace Paley
“Distance” by Grace Haley
“Wants” by Grace Paley
“Tracks” by Julio Ramón Ribeyro
“Dream Man” by Christina Rivera Garza
“After Hours at the Acacia Park Pool” by Kirstin Valdez Quade
“Noche” by Joy Williams
“Postcard” by Joy Williams
Plenty of good stories this month, but I find myself with little say beyond that. One I disliked entirely.
“Gifu” was strange and unique. It let me to borrow K-Ming Chang’s collection from my library.
“The Blackhills” by Eamon McGuinness stuck with me—echoes of classic Hemingway stories.