IMAGINE THAT!

Realist Fiction
by George Saunders

Last night, in a biker bar, I overheard two men discussing what distinguished “realist” fiction from more “experimental” work. Although one shouldn’t generalize, I never expect bikers to be literary critics. Well, these were literary critics, and good ones—in fact, they’d bought their “hogs” with royalties from a book they’d co-written, Feminine Desire In Jane Austen.
[More]
 
Myth Milk
by Etgar Keret

They shot him like a dog, and me they slapped. That’s how it always is—they shoot the men like dogs and the women get slapped. [More]

Imagine That!
with George Saunders and Etgar Keret

The only talent I had connected to writing is that I am a very good liar. I try to use my talents less and less, but I’m very, very good. I know a lot about the geography and the ontology of lying. [More]

INVENTING THE PAST

I Invented Rome
by Arthur Japin

I invented Rome. The new Rome. The Rome where life is sweet, the place people imagine when they hear the name—that was my idea. It was just an idea, that’s all. The city was in decline. Roma had survived the war, but years later she was still groaning under the consequences. And because I loved her, I felt her pain. [More]

The Acrobat
by Wu Ming

Sharpen the blade on the strop fixed to the wall, moisten the soap in the bowl with hot water, remove any loose bristles from the badger-hair brush, soap your face, pass the razor across your face, slow down as you get to the cleft in your chin, remove any remaining soap with the hot flannel, inspect your face for remaining hairs. [More]

Inventing the Past
with Arthur Japin, Colum McCann, Imma Monso, Laila Lalami, and Michael Wallner

What we, or at any rate I, refer to confidently as a memory—meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion—is really just a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. [More]

How She Penetrates
By Maggie Nelson

Figment

When I tell my grandfather
I am writing about Jane, he says,

What will it be, a figment
of your imagination?

We are eating awful little pizzas
and my mother is into

the boxed wine.

[More]

THE MESSINESS OF NOW

The Messiness of Now
with Ilija Trojanow and Amitava Kumar

Postcolonial is the wrong word—this is, as you call it, a funkier moment. Postcolonialism is an academic word, and academia is interested in purity, in clear distinctions. That term doesn’t quite apply to this moment of mixing, of hybridity, perversity. [More]

PEN AMERICA 8: MAKING HISTORIES 

The eighth issue of PEN American Center's award-winning literary journal will be available at the end of March.

>> Pre-order Issue 8: Making Histories
>> Subscribe to the journal