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«Non c’era quasi conversazione nella quale non venisse fuori il nome di Freud, un nome non meno compatto di quello di Karl Kraus, con quel cupo dittongo e la “d” finale, ma certo più attraente quanto a significato. Erano allora in circolazione tutta una serie di nomi monosillabici che sarebbero bastati per le esigenze più diverse, ma Freud era un caso particolare: alcune parole da lui create erano già entrate nell’uso comune. Dai personaggi più autorevoli del mondo universitario era ancora sdegnosamente ignorato. Ma gli atti mancati, in compenso, erano diventati una specie di gioco di società. Per poter usare spesso quel termine così amato, la gente li produceva in serie; in ogni conversazione, per quanto animata e apparentemente del tutto spontanea, lo si poteva indovinare sulla bocca del proprio interlocutore: ora viene un atto mancato. E subito dopo l’atto mancato era lì, materializzato, e si poteva procedere compiaciuti alla sua spiegazione, svelando quali processi l’avevano generato; in quel modo si poteva parlare di sé all’infinito, senza stancarsi né dare l’impressione d’insistere in modo inopportuno sulle proprie faccende private: si stava anzi contribuendo a chiarire un fenomeno di interesse generale, anzi di interesse scientifico.» Elias Canetti Il frutto del fuoco, trad. di Andrea Casalegno e Renata Colorni, Adelphi 1982

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"listen: there’s a hell of a good universe next door; let’s go"

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– Che cosa ha detto Nina ai Pulcini? Che io ero tuo marito?

– Sì.

– Quando ci siamo sposati?

– Un anno fa, a Napoli.

– Oh! – fece una pausa. Cercava di essere spiritoso. – È stato un bel matrimonio?

– Non lo so, – disse la ragazza. – Io non c’ero.

(Alfred Hayes, La ragazza della Via Flaminia, traduz. Floriana Bossi, Einaudi)

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Philip Roth è seduto al tavolo davanti alla macchina da scrivere. Lo vediamo attraverso la finestra, rinchiuso tra le sbarre dell’infisso. Inforca un paio di occhiali da vista, una mano sul fianco e una al mento. Un sottile nervosismo sembra attraversarlo, la bocca socchiusa e la mascella in...

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Detail from a portrait of Carlota Joaquina de Bourbon by Mariano Salvador Maella. 1785.

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"Siblings" by Patricia Smith

Arlene learned to dance backwards in heels that were too high. Bret prayed for a shaggy mustache made of mud and hair. Cindy just couldn't keep her windy legs together. Dennis never learned to swim. Emily whispered her gusts into a thousand skins. Franklin, farsighted and anxious, bumbled villages. Gert spat her matronly name against a city's flat face. Harvey hurled a wailing child high. Irene, the baby girl, threw pounding tantrums. José liked the whip sound of slapping. Lee just craved the whip. Maria's thunder skirts flew high when she danced. Nate was mannered and practical. He stormed precisely. Ophelia nibbled weirdly on the tips of depressions. Philippe slept too late, flailing on a wronged ocean. Rita was a vicious flirt. She woke Philippe with rumors. Stan was born business, a gobbler of steel. Tammy crooned country, getting the words all wrong. Vince died before anyone could remember his name. Wilma opened her maw wide, flashing rot.

None of them talked about Katrina. She was their odd sister, the blood dazzler.

[Patricia Smith, "Siblings" from Blood Dazzler. Copyright © 2008 by Patricia Smith]

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INTERVIEWER How do you know when the work is going well? FRANZEN The word I’ve been using to talk about that lately is adequacy. My primary reader and consultant for Freedom was my friend Elisabeth Robinson, who’s been struggling with her own new novel, and one of her gifts to me was her saying, “You only have to make this book adequate.” To which she was nice enough to add: “Your adequate is very good.” When I was younger, the main struggle was to be a “good writer.” Now I more or less take my writing abilities for granted, although this doesn’t mean I always write well. And, by a wide margin, I’ve never felt less self-­consciously preoccupied with language than I did when I was writing Freedom. Over and over again, as I was producing chapters, I said to myself, “This feels nothing like the writing I did for twenty years—this just feels transparent.” I wasn’t seeing in the pages any of the signs I’d taken as encouraging when I was writing The Corrections. The sentences back then had had a pop. They were, you know, serious prose sentences, and I was able to vanquish my doubts simply by rereading them. When I was showing Corrections chapters to David Means, I basically expected his rubber stamp, because the sentences had a level of effulgence that left me totally defended. But here, with Freedom, I felt like, “Oh my God, I just wrote however many metaphor-free pages about some weird days in the life of a college student, I have no idea if this is any good.” I needed validation in a way I never had before. I was admittedly somewhat conscious that this was a good sign—that it might mean that I was doing something different, pressing language more completely into the service of providing transparent access to the stories I was telling and to the characters in those stories. But it still felt like a leap into the void.

da Jonathan Franzen, The Art of Fiction No. 207. Interviewed by Stephen J. Burn

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Gustave Moreau Les licornes (1888 circa)

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Kino Dukla, Palác Svět, Praha Libeň

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The Fish-Wife by Cynthia Huntington

I’ll take a bath when it snows,

when I can look out the window up high

and see the sky all pale

and blank like a fish’s eye.

And I know the boats won’t go out tonight,

the fishermen drinking whiskey, locked

in a bar-dream, the music rocking them deeper.

  It doesn’t snow enough here,

though some would say otherwise,

fearing accidents. But the paper boy, skidding

uphill on his bike in light snow, knows better,

making S-tracks when his wheels slide sideways.

  We really needed this snow, the old men will say,

putting to bed the surface roots of trees,

putting to bed the too-travelled streets.

  When everything is covered

the earth has a light of its own;

the snow falls down from the moon

as everyone knows, and brings that light

back to us. I needed this light.

  All day I kept by the window, watching the sky,

a prisoner in my clothes, the wind felt dry

and mean. Starlings stalked the yard with evil eyes

—I hated them, and hated, too, my neighbor’s house

where sparks from the chimney fell back in a stinking

cloud—black ashes bringing no blessing.

  When the roads are covered,

when the water is black and snow falls

into the waves, the birds’ hunger swirls

the air, dark lovely shapes. All hungers

are equal now. I'll give them bread and seeds.

  I have no money; the whiskey is gone,

and I must bathe in water. Fishermen, please

do not go out in your flimsy boats tonight

to chase after the cod and mackerel,

to hook the giant eels. Go safe,

go free. Let your feet leave trails

through streets and yards, wandering

home, your crooked voyages to bed.

[Cynthia Huntington, “The Fish-Wife” from The Fish-Wife. Copyright © 1986 by Cynthia Huntington]

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Women’s Prize for Fiction 2013 winner A.M. Homes introduces one of her favourite authors - Shirley Jackson.

I want to introduce you to the work of Shirley Jackson, whose novels and short stories transformed my life as both a reader and writer. The story you have before you,

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Women during the ‘Roaring Twenties’

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«The reason you haven’t felt it is because it doesn’t exist. What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons. You’re born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts. But I never forget. I’m living like there’s no tomorrow, because there isn’t one.»

Don Draper