I keep a list of the men I sleep with since the last time I slept with you. What he does to me. What I do to him. What we do together. Some men end up on several lists. You have your own list, the could-have-been-forever list. Yours is a lonely list.

Number one was eight years younger than me. I hadn’t even unpacked my apartment. He gave me head. I didn’t touch him. He was 29 days after the last time you and I slept together.

My heart is still broken. I haven’t seen you in more than a month. I know nothing about your life. Did you buy a car or get a new job? Is my agreed-to fatwa on shopping at the store where you work(ed) moot? Are you in love?

My heart is still broken. I have gotten used to how my heart feels.

Or how it doesn’t feel.

The pain no longer overwhelms me. I haven’t felt overwhelmed in weeks. I don’t let myself think that you and I almost could have been under different circumstances. I do not let myself think that I should have tried harder. I do not let myself think these thoughts because you still would have been an addict, and if I have learned anything since the last time you and I slept together, when you date an addict, you’re dating an addiction, not a person.

Number seven works at an Apple store. He fixed my iPhone, and to test it, he called me. Later, he sent me a text: You have my number. Use it. I used it a few days later. After, when I told him he couldn’t smoke, he told me that he could get me a discount on an iPad.

I Google phrases like “What becomes of the brokenhearted” and “Healing a broken heart,” because I know I am not the first person to feel what I’m feeling. Or what I’m not feeling. Three pages into the thousands of hits Google returns, I find a woman who claims she can heal broken hearts. She has healed broken hearts, she says, her entire professional life, first as a practicing cardiologist, and now as a practitioner of less medically sound heart-healing techniques.

48 days since the last time you and I had sex.

Number 11 had bad breath.

Number 12 wanted to cuddle after.

Number 13 made me watch the news with him before he reached for my belt.

I get in touch with the heart faith healer, because I don’t know what else to do. I no longer want to cede these pieces of my heart to you. I no longer want to not feel.

She had her hand inside a man’s chest, she tells me, and she was pumping his heart because he was dying. She had promised that she could fix him. She had promised his daughter that he would walk her down the aisle. She wasn’t going to let him die. And as she pumped and yelled at the man and his heart to keep trying, she realized that she was in the wrong business. She still wanted to heal hearts; she just didn’t want to have to cut open someone in order to do it. The man died. She had to tell his family that she had done everything she could. She gave her notice that day.

She doesn’t want to be called a heart faith healer. She doesn’t think you need faith to heal a broken heart; she thinks you need time, consideration, trust, maybe even some hope, but not faith. The only faith you need, she tells me, is faith that what’s next in store for you is worth the pain you currently feel. Let your heart pull you where it wants to pull you, she says. You will see why when you get there. For now, just follow it.

A broken heart is a universal story, and a story that often comes with a happy ending, she says. I’m paraphrasing.

We correspond via e-mail. I do not know what she looks like. I have not heard her voice. I do not know if her method for healing broken hearts works. Here, I have to have faith.

Ways to not heal a broken heart: using and abusing substances, finding another distraction, and taking another lover.

Number 18 was this afternoon. I took a long lunch break.

The last time my heart broke, I was 20, a junior in college, and convinced that she and I would never have lasted anyway. I started dating someone a few weeks later.

Since the summer after my freshman year in high school, I have been single 151 days. Not 151 days in a row, but 151 days total. The number surprises me. Remembering each person and the length of time between ends and beginnings surprises me. I only started keeping track since you and I last slept together.

Numbers 22 and 23 are a couple. They ask me to spend the night.

The heart is a brain, she tells me. Let it reboot.

Later, in our last e-mail exchange, though I don’t know at the time that I will not write her again, she tells me I should talk to my heart. Put a hand on my heart and tell it that I love it. Tell my heart that it, and I, will be okay. Sounds silly, she says, but it works.

That night, after I leave the apartment number 28 shares with the man he intends to marry (they’re both bottoms, so their open relationship allows for the occasional top to come over), I get in bed, take off my clothes, and put a hand on my heart. We’re going to be okay, I tell my heart. In time, we will love more deeply and truly.

They say—and who the they is, I still don’t know—but they say that in order to build muscle, you have to break down what you have. It will rebuild itself, and in this rebuilding, it grows bigger and stronger. The heart is a muscle. Break it and let it rebuild itself. In this rebuilding, it will grow bigger and stronger.

I talk to my heart.

My heart does not talk back.

Number 30 lives two blocks from me. He says we should do this more often. I think that I will have to avoid his street from now on.

I make you CDs, because making you CDs is the only way I have left to talk to you. You and I used to make a CD for each other every two weeks. Clockwork, these exchanges. I expected we would run out of songs in our iTunes to share.

Jewel says that the pope, rock-and-roll, Ms. Cleo, and Valium are not able to fix broken hearts. Someone can, she sings. Someone.

But songs cannot mend hearts. Words cannot mend hearts. Sex cannot mend hearts.

Number 37 likes it against a wall. He likes his neck squeezed. He likes to feel totally out of control.

Even broken, hearts keep beating.

The Tin Man, who sought out a heart, wasn’t sure that he really needed one. Hearts will never be practical until they are made unbreakable, someone tells him.

I played the Tin Man in a middle school production of the Wizard of Oz. My mother took a refrigerator box, painted it silver, and made it into my tin costume. She wrapped tin foil around a oil funnel for me to wear on my head. My father brought home an ax from work for me to carry. Be careful, he warned me; it is sharp. Somewhere in a box in the attic in the loft is the heart medallion I got during the play. I think I should find that medallion and hang it somewhere in my apartment.

This apartment is the first place in which I have lived alone since before I met my wife, who will soon be my ex-wife. She did not know about my affair with you until you and I were no longer having an affair. She and I are still brokering an uneasy peace, mostly because she is pregnant and our son is about to turn three. She tells me that she’s sorry I lost you, but that she’s not sorry an addict is not raising her children.

An addict will never raise my children, she tells me. My children. Hers. Not ours. No longer matching his and hers bath towels. I took mine. She threw out hers. Her mother bought her an entire set of towels. They’re purple, these towels. She’s always wanted purple towels, she tells me. I never knew that.

What about a transplant? That’s an option. Replace my broken heart with one that never loved you. Too bad there’s an organ shortage crisis. About 3,000 Americans are waiting for a heart transplant. In 2009, 359 people died waiting for their name to come up, for their heart to become available. That’s about one person a day.

Number 39 is ugly, but I still fuck him.

Hearts cannot regenerate. Doctors who have treated heart attack patients with injections of stem calls have had little success in growing back broken and missing pieces of a heart. Over the course of our lifetimes, about half the cells of the heart are replaced, but this regenerative capacity does not accelerate when the heart is injured. In the case of a heart attack, scar tissue replaces damaged cells.

Someone told me once that scar tissue is stronger than skin. Okay. You told me this once. You were explaining the scars on your arms, where you cut yourself one night. You didn’t want to die, you told me; you just didn’t want to feel. You turned to crystal meth for the same reason. You stopped using crystal meth because you needed to feel. Your mother was diagnosed with cancer. You had to take care of her. You told me that if she dies—when she dies—you don’t know how you will go on.

Each night I was with you, I would kiss the twin scars on your arms. One is thicker and uglier than the other. I kissed your scars because I saw all of the pain you felt—you feel—in these scars. I thought I could heal you. I thought you wanted me to heal you.

You’d think that the divine design guiding the way our bodies grow and develop and operate would have had a contingency plan in place for the times when our hearts break.

University of Kentucky Psychologist Nathan DeWall wondered why we don’t treat psychic pain—like heartache—the way we treat physical pain. DeWall has already proven that hearts and minds can hurt with the intensity of a migraine, and that rejection and isolation can break the spirit, so why not see if over-the-counter medication like Tylenol eases psychic pain and soothes emotional suffering.

DeWall and his colleagues gave volunteers a 1,000 milligram dose of acetaminophen—the active ingredient in Tylenol. The volunteers took the drug twice a day for three weeks. The acetaminophen salved the pain the volunteers felt. But Tylenol is not great on the liver, especially in such large and frequent doses. So you choose: your heart or your liver. You need both to live, but one is easier to replace than the other.

Currently, more than 17,000 Americans are waiting for a liver.

Despite my apathy for non-Caucasian men, numbers 43 through 48 are each from other countries. A man from France speaks with such a heavy accent that I ask him not to talk while we fuck. A man from Brazil has a gray penis.

The next time my heart breaks—because of course it will again break—I think it will break along your fault line. The break should hurt less. Bones broken repeatedly tend to hurt less with each subsequent breaking, as if your body becomes used to the breaking and is numb to how badly it hurts.

Number 50. Halfway to my goal. I hadn’t realized I had a goal until I left number 50. I had to be quick. He had to be quick. Yoga was starting soon.

I joined a gym and started practicing yoga the week after my relationship with you ended. In four months, I lose 60 pounds. I am practicing yoga six days a week. I want to run into you somewhere—a concert, a bar, the park—if only to see your expression when you see me. Sucks, when your ex looks better after the relationship than he did during. My wife, who is still my wife, despite our no longer living together, tells me that I’m finally me.

I’m not sure what she means, but I know what she means is right.

Number 61 doesn’t last long. I almost don’t want to finish.

But I do.

I tell my therapist during one of our sessions that I think that each day that passes takes me one day closer to the next we I’m meant to be a part of.

She says, Will, your next we may not be your final we. You may go through several wes before you find your final we.

I think she uses words like final we because I use words like final we. I expect she tailors her vocabulary and conversation to each specific client. If I were someone else, she’d say the same thing, but she would say it differently.

She tells me things in a way that makes me feel like I knew all along the things she is telling me. She is my first therapist. She says in time—because everything will happen in time, some unspecified period of time—I will not need to see her every week. And she’s right. In time, I start seeing her every other week, and then every three weeks, and then once a month, and then not at all.

Number 69. That’s what we do.

I tell Judi that I have begun to think of my relationship with you as if I was a battered spouse. I deserved the way you treated me, when you’d pick drugs over me, because I hadn’t told you the truth about my wife and didn’t think I had the right to ask you to choose.

You had said another ex-boyfriend had asked you to choose between him and the drugs, and that you had chosen the drugs.

Numbers 76 and 77. Another couple. A different couple. I should get in touch with numbers 22 and 23. I liked them. No one said I couldn’t repeat.

You would have chosen the drugs had I asked while we were together.

I know you would have because in the end, when I asked—of course I had to ask; you wanted me to marry you—you picked the drugs.

Number 81 has the same name as your best friend. You and he started getting high every night. You and he started snorting pills. I became an afterthought. I was who you called when you and your best friend were done, because when you’re high, you like to be fucked.

I couldn’t compete with what getting high feels like for you.

Number 90 stays overnight with me, and in the morning, I drive him to the train station. He asks if he can see me again. I tell him yes, even though I know I will not see him again.

I couldn’t compete with the uncomplicated nature of friendship.

You and I last slept together 279 days ago. The morning after, I left for work before you. I kissed your cheek. You were still asleep. I expected to see you that night after work. I always saw you at night after work.

A man out there—some number I do not yet know—will want to kiss his way across the scar on my heart. He will tell me that he has been waiting for me, and that he is all-in, and that he will do what he can to help me heal. But I will not need him to kiss his way across the scar of my heart, because I will have already healed. No one else can heal me but me. I will heal, and then I will let the universe decide what comes next.

Number 100 isn’t anyone special. He is just number 100.

***
“One Hundred” is an excerpt from William Henderson’s in-progress memoir, House of Cards. Other excerpts have appeared in Dr. Hurley’s Snake-Oil Cure, Eunoia Review, Hippocampus Magazine, Annalemma Magazine, Curbside Quotidian, Sea Giraffe (from which he was awarded the Martius Prize in Nonfiction), the Smoking Poet, and other publications. Henderson works as a freelance writer, editor, and copyeditor, and is a full-time father to his children, Avery and Aurora. He can be reached at wil329@yahoo.com, on Twitter @Avesdad, and through his blog, HendersonHouseofCards.wordpress.com.

In Plato’s Symposium, the poet Aristophanes proposes his theory on the origin of love. Man, he explains, was not always divided into two sexes. In the beginning we had four legs, four arms, and two sets of eyes, and we rolled about on the surface of the earth perfectly happy. Knowing nothing of suffering, we soon grew restless and over-confident. It wasn’t long before we made an attack on the gods themselves. In response, Zeus cut us in two “as you might divide an egg with a hair” and we were left two halves of one perfect being, constantly in search of our other half.

Since then love has been our obsession. Why do we fall in love? Why does love bring so much pain? What can we do to prevent love from destroying us? Unfortunately, as Anne Carson outlines in her philosphical essay, Eros the Bittersweet, we will never understand it. It is something beyond us—something just within our fingertips but always taking that one extra step to elude us. In the end we begin to realize that this is perhaps for the best—that it is maybe more fortunate than we realize. In terms of desire, the wanter and the wanted never come together. “To catch beauty,” Carson explains in the preface:

would be to understand how that impertinent stability in vertigo is possible. But no, delight need not reach so far. To be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope.

Eros is a stunning book. Carson delves through literatures both ancient and modern, both literary and philosophical, to underscore what she believes to be the primary characteristic of desire: its contradictory impossibility. The lyric poet Sappho, she explains, summed it up in one word: γλυκόπικρος, or “sweetbitter”—an experience of simultaneous pleasure and pain. From there, Carson leaves no facet of love left unexamined, unpacking ancient theories of desire with crisp and cutting translations, an overwhelming knowledge of classical literature, and an insatiable thirst to define what love means to us. The result is an endlessly fascinating treatise that feels very much like the act of falling in love itself.

“The word eros,” Carson states, “denotes ‘want,’ ‘lack,’ ‘desire for that which is missing.’ The lover wants what he does not have.” Who can dispute this? Going back to Aristophanes’ origin of love, she says of the lover, “The presence of want awakens in him nostalgia for wholeness.” Again—we are searching for that other half. When we find what we seek, all curiosity—all desire—ceases, and there’s nothing left for us to do. The act of love in the ancient world was an act of pursuit. “Desire moves,” Carson says. “Love ‘puts the heart in my chest on wings.’” In this sense, we understand that something within us changes when we fall in love. We go through a transformation, and this is why love is so irrefutably important.

Carson broadens the sense of desire beyond sexuality: “A mood of knowledge is emitted by the spark that leaps in the lover’s soul. He feels on the verge of grasping something not grasped before.” And so desire—the pursuit of something adored—extends to the process of coming to know, or reaching out for knowledge. Knowledge is desirable. Our attitude toward love is that if we could only have our beloved—if we could only come to control him or her—we would be at peace. The same is true with knowledge: we are always on the cusp of understanding but we never quite understand. Before desire—and before knowledge—the self is whole, complete, and safe from external force. The self is invulnerable. When struck by desire, by the god Eros—the “limb-loosener,” of “sweet tears” and “bitter honey”—our self is suddenly changed, and as Carson reminds us, “Change of self is loss of self.” The metaphors for falling in love “are metaphors of war, disease, and bodily dissolution.” With exquisite clarity Carson shows us just how brutal desire can be and before long we sympathize with these ancient poets, wanting nothing more than to shut ourselves up from love forever and live on invulnerable and apathetic. We are wary of change and wary of love.

Of course it cannot be that simple. In an extended examination of Plato’s Phaedrus, Carson reveals Sokrates’ position on the matter of love—a truly radical stance at the time. Love brings madness—that goes without saying—but Sokrates believed that “erotic mania is a valuable thing in private life. It puts wings on your soul.” And what are wings but transformative elements—elements of motion? Without the placement of our soul on wings, how are we to move? Again: “Desire moves.” Things like falling in love and coming to know are maddening but necessary, are painful but key to our survival as human beings. This favored description of the poets and philosophers is central to our understanding of the importance of love, finding themselves “describing Eros in images of wings and metaphors of flying, for desire is a movement that carries yearning hearts from over here to over there, launching the mind on a story.” Love is a triangulation of now, then, and the space between—of lover, beloved, and the distance between them—of student, knowledge, and the potential journey of coming to know. Even if we never truly understand love, Carson helps us understand its necessity. Without it we would go nowhere.

My first exposure to comic books was in my paternal grandparent’s mobile home where my uncle John—my dad’s baby brother—still had a room. He also had hundreds of serial comic books jammed tight into the headboard of his narrow captain’s bed. When I visited, this would be my room, John being relegated to the couch. Most were of the superhero variety and of little interest to a seven year old girl. But every now and then, my random selection would reward an Archie or Casper story.

When I was a few years older, I would find Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comics in the room of my mother’s youngest brother. Dave’s room was always smokey, and full of contraband. I learned early that comics somehow straddled the line between adult and kid lit and were, by and large, for boys.

It wasn’t until art school in the mid-nineties, that I was exposed to a greater variety of comics, zines, and graphic novels. They blurred the line between comics and journals, and some even had girl-centric story lines such as Dykes, Eightball and Love and Rockets. But until I read Maus by Art Spiegelman, comics were still just a vehicle for entertainment—an escape. Maus is the Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Spielgelman’s father, Vladek, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. It wasn’t the first nonfiction comic, but its popularity helped to broaden the readership and fanbase for such work.

by Greg Cook

In Syncopated: an Anthology of Nonfiction Picto-Essays (Villard, 2009), editor Brendan Burford seeks to expand the dialogue that works like Maus have begun. Within this large-format collection, Burford has assembled an ambitious collection of comics-as-essay ranging from personal narrative, to biography, to literary journalism and more.

The biggest drawback to the collection is the overly pedantic title. Why Burford chose the word “picto-essay” over “comic” is a mystery. Brendan Burford is currently the Comics Editor for King Features Syndicate, which brings Beetle Bailey, Family Circus, Prince Valiant, and dozens more classic comic strips to daily papers all over the US. Perhaps the awkward wording was an attempt to separate these comics from those comics. There’s no faulting the accuracy of the term, but it makes this collection seem pretentious—which it is not. Rather it is primarily an attempt to tell 16 good stories, and perhaps secondarily an attempt to highlight an important comic sub-genre and its impact on the field of literary nonfiction.

by Brendan Burford

Lee Gutkind, in the introduction to The Best Creative Nonfiction Volume 1 differentiates the genre from pure journalism in that, “Creative nonfiction writers tell stories, utilizing dialogue, description, characterization, point of view, while at the same time remaining true to the facts.” This is a useful definition to use when gauging the success of the comics in Syncopated.

Several selections stand out, notably the first piece, a memoir by Nick Bertozzi, about baling hay. The panels are small and snug on the page, mimicking the shape of hay bales even as they tell a story that ends up being about much more than just a farm.

by Paul Hoppe

“West Side Improvements,” is a tight journalism piece by Alex Holden about early graffiti artists in New York City. While “Coney Island Rumination” by Paul Hoppe presents more as sketchbook pages, eulogizing an urban landmark.

Other notables include Jim Campbell and Burford’s own story of Boris Rose, a live-recorded jazz aficionado, and Alex Longstreth’s tale of the Dvorak keyboard.

Two pieces succeed wordlessly with strong visuals. One, a meditation on light and shadows in a city park by Tricia Van den Burgh, the other on-site sketches of subway buskers by Victor Marchand Kerlow. While it is common to see a series of photographs as “essay,” it is encouraging to see Burford extending that idea to the frames or pages of a comic as well. Kerlow’s buskers vibrantly precede work being done today by Wendy MacNaughton, who captures small populations (Mission district bartenders, farmer’s market farmers) in watercolors and their own words.

by Nick Bertozzi

The difficult pieces seem to fall short in either graphics or story, but never both. “Father Figures” by Josh Neufeld seems to be missing a great deal of subtext in its series of polaroid-like snapshots of various men from his childhood. While Nate Powell’s compelling and rich graphics tell a harrowing story about  Tulsa race riots in 1921, but suffer from a rushed and jumbled narrative. But even these pieces can instruct the reader on what pitfalls exist for graphic essays.

Syncopated can be seen as the beginning of an important conversation about nonfiction comics. It could even work as a textbook for a critical class on the subject. More than just a “serious” comic book—this anthology speaks to the ongoing evolution of the essay. While it does suffer from variable levels of success, as anthologies often do, the majority of pieces are strong and represent different niches in the genre—from personal memoir to literary journalism.

(All frames courtesy of Brendan Burford and used by permission.)

We were…feminists who weren’t afraid to call ourselves such—rare among a generation of women who sneered at the word while feasting at the table feminism set.

Cheryl Strayed, from “Pussy Fever”

I have two confessions before we go any further. The first is that I have written for The Rumpus, “an online magazine focused on culture as opposed to ‘pop culture’.” Since I am also a woman, there is an unavoidable solidarity between myself and the women who contributed to this collection.

The second is that I don’t generally like collections of women’s writings. Or, more specifically, I am often wary of collections with “women” in the title, the same way I am wary of pop songs with “Savior” in the title. I worry that they have an agenda, and that the agenda will be louder than the art. I don’t want to be chastised for my politics or for any insufficient flap in my feminist flag. I want to be transported, startled, even awed.

I make these confessions not as a concession, but as a means to position my interpretation of this book between two pre-existing extremes.

In the introduction, editors Julie Greicius and Elissa Bassist tell how Rumpus Women Volume 1: Personal Essays by Women went from conception to collation to printer in around 21 days. This book was the answer to The Rumpus’ problem of what to offer their Book Club members in November of 2010. Rumpus website founder, Stephen Elliott, felt that they had already featured too many books by men, and wanted balance. The site editors wanted to feature a nonfiction selection. Since The Rumpus couldn’t find a book to fit their parameters and time frame, they decided to publish one.

The short time-line is both a remarkable feat and the primary flaw in this collection. While the writing and organization are solid, the copy editing often disappoints. As John Gardner cautioned in On Becoming a Novelist, “If the dream is to be continuous, we must not be roughly jerked from the dream back to the words on the page by [grammar or punctuation] that’s distracting.” The typos can distract, and in turn detract, from the otherwise articulate, passionate, and engaging voices in the stronger essays.

What is most impressive about the pieces in Rumpus Women, is that they defy convention at almost every turn. For example, two of the essays deal with reproductive cancers, but both deftly avoid over-sentimentality. In “33-Year-Old Female with Palpable Mass (for Sophie),” Sarah Fran Wisby imagines her medical charts as poetry; while Nell Boeschenstein positions her older sister’s battle with breast cancer against a backdrop of fox-hunting and tense family relations, in “The Hounds.”

Women of color, lesbian women, straight women, youthful women, mature women, and even possibly crazy women are included in this first volume. Some of the women take off their clothes for money and some commit suicide; others refuse to do either. At times the diversity can seem contrived, but for the most part, this is a solid collection of skillful voices.

A few of the pieces seem immature, and would likely not have made the final draft had been time for a second round of contributions and edits, but it is easy to forgive these against the strength of others.

The exchange between The Rumpus’ columnist “Sugar” and editor Elissa Bassist, entitled “Dear Sugar #48: Write Like a Motherfucker,” manages to be inspiring rather than patronizing. While Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s “Nine Rounds for Yuri Foreman,” explores her battles with anxiety beautifully within the structure of a famous boxing match and the tenets of the Jewish Sabbat.

Other standouts include Antonia Crane’s “Locker 29,” about auditioning for a strip club in New Orleans; and Camille Dungy’s “A Good Hike,” in which the author breaks her ankle while at a writing retreat.

Overall the collection is adroit, if somewhat burdened by technical difficulties. It is true that a few pieces feel stunted by haste and suffer from lack of clarity. But it is also true that several essays brilliantly and effectively arc over any conception of agenda to land in the realm of art.

Chelsea Biondolillo’s prose has appeared or is forthcoming in Diagram, The Rumpus, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Sea Stories, and The Rio Review. She has been rejected by some of the best MFA programs in the country and continues to take science credits for fun. Recently, she held a hummingbird in her hand. She writes something every day at http://transatlanticenchilada.blogspot.com/

In our discussions of celebrity artists—be they authors, film directors, composers, fashion designers, or any of the other myriad creative pursuits—the word “genius” is oftentimes used indiscriminantly. The simple pair of words—“genius artist”—yields a horrifying 21 million results in a variety of search engines. The dictionary¹ provides us with the following: “a person who is exceptionally intelligent or creative.” Certainly there’s a value judgment placed on that rather ambiguous “exceptionally,” yet even the most jaded of us must make concessions when confronted with choice bodies of work². Occasionally, we are met with those legacies of such unrestrained passion and vibrance that no critic could dispute it.

David Foster Wallace³ is a genius. We choose the word “is” because even though Wallace committed suicide in September of 2008 his oeuvre, like that of all geniuses, is still here for us to experience. One truly remarkable aspect of genius⁴ is its ability to continue on with all its initial strength⁵ and affect our thinking, our intellectual and emotional capacity, our decisions, our breathing and our pulse, our tear ducts, the little hairs on our arms and necks, our sweat glands, and in every other way imaginable sow the embryonic ideas and nascent opinions that will one day lead to our own genius⁶.

In Consider the Lobster, David Foster Wallace shows us the genius of his nonfiction. Beginning with an essay on the Adult Video News Awards⁷ and ending with a labyrinthine portrait of a conservative radio host⁸, this collection illustrates unfalteringly the astute awareness of what Los Angeles Times editor David Ulin called “one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years”⁹. Here we see that Wallace is (was) not merely a novelist, merely a literary critic, or even merely an essayist. His finger is (was) so firmly on the pulse of the modern world that he can only be described as our foremost cultural critic. Wallace goes beyond literary insight and journalistic impartiality¹⁰. He goes beyond an extraordinary prose style¹¹. In Consider the Lobster, the polyethylene film adherent to all things American is peeled back and the startling truth is laid bare underneath. What does it say about our culture where on any given year “between one and two dozen adult US males are admitted to ERs after having castrated themselves” or “no generation of Young Voters has ever cared less about politics and politicians”? In the wake of September 11th, 2001, where did all the tiny US flags come from? Do lobsters, “com[ing] alarmingly to life when placed in boiling water,” feel pain? As we read on it becomes clear that Wallace is a certain brand of genius. He isn’t merely creative or merely brilliant or merely one of our most perceptive thinkers—instead his genius is especially pertinent when we consider our culture. David Foster Wallace, like few before him, is a cultural genius.

So—in the wake of one of the previous decade’s most upsetting literary tragedies^{again, see FN 9}, where does that leave us? Wallace is “a versatile writer of seemingly bottomless energy”¹² and he has indeed left behind a monolithic body of work, but what next? His style¹³ is exhaustive and leaves its mark in the pantheon of idiosyncratic styles in that there’s so much to love, so much to hate, and so much to envy. In Consider the Lobster, as well as the rest of his work, he shows us the real pleasure—the ecstasy—in reading. For those among us¹⁴ seeking inspiration, Wallace is essential, whatever your tastes. We all fell in love with reading once—why not do it all over again?

***
1: Apple, Inc. v. 2.1.3*
2: ie: James Joyce, Igor Stravinsky, Salvador Dali, Maria Callas, David Lynch**, Herman Melville, William Shakespeare, John Lennon†, Anne Carson, J. W. von Goethe
3: B. 1962, Ithica, NY, D. 2008, Claremont, CA
4: This reviewer’s opinion
5: If not more
6: Which is of course purely theoretical§
7: Absolutely terrifying
8: Even more terrifying
9: See the September 14, 2008 article on Wallace’s suicide in the Los Angeles Times
10: Even in political essays, such as the 2000 essay on the McCain campaign or the aforementioned “Host” re: conservative talk radio, Wallace remains objective and offers an approach that wouldn’t necessarily be called bipartisan so much as purely observant.
11: ie: “How can great athletes shut off the Iago-like voice of the self?”; “None of the ladies seem to notice the president’s odd little lightless eyes appear to get closer and closer together throughout his taped address”; “Dostoevsky is a literary titan, and in some ways this can be the kiss of death, because it comes easy to regard him as yet another sepia-tinted Canonical Author, belovedly dead”; “Unlike Gore’s dead bird’s eyes or the Shrub’s^ƒsmug glare McCain’s own eyes are wide and candid and full of a very attractive inspiring light that’s either devotion to causes beyond him or a demagogue’s love of the crowd’s love or an insatiable hunger to become the most powerful white male on earth”
12: See the New York Times article on Wallace’s suicide^∆
13: Again, labyrinthine: Wallace reminds us of our very nonlinear existence with extensive footnotes, tangents and digressions, complex sentences, his love of vocabulary, etc., etc., etc.^∂
14: Writers young and old, novice and veteran

*Yes, this reviewer has a Mac
**A point of contention with some
†But what is he an artist of? It isn’t only music. Is it possible to be a cultural genius (see main thesis)?
§But we have to believe it. We can’t not believe it. How else can we go on doing what we do without that promise out there waiting however frail and transparent and gossamer and let’s be honest completely and irresponsibly imagined?
ƒ“GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush”
∆ This is possibly the most pervasive, depressing, and disturbing fact of this entire review, if not our literary generation, or even our cultural generation. If genius—if success and literary reknown—are not validating for those of us^a who are in turn prone to depression—who are more often than not pessimistic and overwhelmed by American culture—what hope is there?
∂ Cheekiness aside

a: Speaking from this reviewer’s somewhat sordid personal experience

Katherine calls to tell me she’s using an online dating service. Having lived in Chicago for a few months, she feels like she wants to meet some new people, specifically good-looking single men. “It’s hard to get to know someone you meet at a bar,” she explains, “and this way I know a little bit about their background and I can decide if I want to take it further than hello.”

“Isn’t that kind of the point of a first date?” Yes, she agrees, but the on-line thing leaves less to chance. This way she’s sure and almost feels like she’s in control. “If I give some guy on the El Train my number, he could turn out to be a total creep and then he has this weird sort of access to my attention because I always have my phone, you know? So, I made up an e-mail address strictly for my dating profile. That way, I don’t have to worry about putting myself out there too much but if I do make a connection.” I ask her how she can be sure she’s made a match just using a made-up email address. “I’ll just know,” she says. I don’t argue with her. She may be on to something.

We are a product of the moment: almost 75% of North America is ‘online’. It’s no wonder that a slow courtship might be cultivated through the wires. The means do not change the desired end. It’s the connection we crave. In this quickly moving, thoroughly modern American society, so much is being offered- opportunities, information, and even relationships. When I consider just how much is available, I feel something spiked and electric coiling in my chest. It’s not affection (close but not yet) and sometimes, it feels like anxiety.

As a member of the so-called ‘Generation Y’, the shiny futures we were vaguely promised have been disappearing. We were raised to believe that our college degrees would be like golden tickets to the future when in actuality, they’re barely worth more than a GED (and usually earned with far less determination than with brazen entitlement). Four (or five or six) years of advanced education will get you a swivel chair, a company laptop and a constant, gnawing hope for advancement or change. Like racehorses, the minute you’re out the gates, it’s not only a matter of keeping up, but staying ahead.

My boss thinks I’m lazy. What I’ve been taught to do in two clicks of the mouse, he gathers in eight. I have learned to sigh away my frustration when the team manager plods over to the copier machine to retrieve his emails, not quite trusting the information until it’s something he can touch. They get nervous when I answer phone calls and input data simultaneously. They don’t realize that I’ve been doing this all my life.

In less than fifteen years, I’ve seen a progression from slow and ungainly desktop monitors to sleek, multifunction handheld devices. The running joke is that I have a search engine, navigation system, text-messenger, and an external hard-drive that I occasionally speak into, the layman’s term is ‘cell phone’. When my mother balks at my attachment to my Blackberry, I explain to her that it saves time. She looks at me as if to say, “Saving time for what?”

“Mom,” I gasp, “You don’t understand.” Suddenly, I’m seventeen again and petitioning for a later curfew. I re-discover my adolescent whine. “When I can do the necessary things more efficiently, I have more time at my disposal for what I actually enjoy doing.” Naturally, I can’t think of one solid example.

“Disposal!” she spits out the word. “Yes, things are faster-communication and all-but I also feel like everything is so much more disposable.” She pauses, thinking. “Nothing is made to last anymore or the technology has changed so much that computers and cell phones become almost obsolete in less than a year of two. Now, even my washer and dryer needs to be digital? Why change what isn’t broken?” She’s not wrong, but I am not entirely sure she’s right either. Technology has made my life easier. I think.

The accessibility of the Internet ‘happened’ while I was in junior high. I am twenty-four now and this fact ages me to people five years or younger. They have no recollection of a life sans Internet. I don’t understand how people bore the lack of information, lived without the constant updates. How the hell do you write a research paper without Google? An enormous amount of information that once had to be carefully siphoned from encyclopedias or days and weeks poring through library books is accessible through a few small typed words.

I admit the information isn’t always reliable, the entire world edits Wikipedia, but it’s…there. What I want to know is accessible. Ignorance isn’t an excuse and certain mysteries are less opaque. The answers are there, even if they’re wrong. ‘What matters more?’ I think to myself.

Does the smug assurance I gain through this simple technology make me more confident in the facts or more wary of the tidy assumptions being offered? Both, probably. For instance, there’s the matter of honesty. Every public statement is recorded. To recant, redact or even change one’s mind is seen as dishonesty. I wonder if it’s even possible to lie anymore. If everyone believes it, does that make it true? Honesty and trust run parallel but not always together.

Trust is important in this largely unmediated techno-scape. I’m a part of the first generation to have learned a sense of community through social networking sites like Facebook or the now entirely ‘uncool’ MySpace. According to the website insidefacebook.com, the average user has five hundred friends. It’s common knowledge that a person can be connected to a complete stranger through what’s known as the ‘six degrees of separation.’ If I ‘friend’ three thousand people, does that mean that I’m somehow, intricately, connected to the entire world? If that proves true, I would have to fake my surprise. After all, I can just easily communicate with someone living in Eastern Europe as someone who lives across town. In my post-graduate diaspora, I have a friend in Belize who I speak to more frequently than many people who live in the same town. The world I know is much smaller than that of my grandparents even though the city limits have not changed by more than a few miles.

It seems to me that voices have gotten louder in the past ten years. With the advent of the Internet, almost everyone has the ability to be heard. There are blogs and websites devoted to this concept entirely. There’s a cacophony of thoughts being transmitted through the wires every day and night. Sometimes, the sound is musical and sometimes, it’s just noise. There’s something about this I find incredibly painful. There’s something about this I find incredibly beautiful. Things come and go so quickly and it’s hard to decide what really matters at times. Maybe what matters is believing in the illusion that someone might be listening.

It boils down to the connection. When these thoughts, profiles, images and information are sent into cyberspace, one doesn’t hope for a hollow echo but a reply. I’ve heard the Internet described as a library with advertising but I’m starting to believe it’s become a conversation. We are talking to each other through this medium. One might wander into a debate, right-click into a humorous monologue or add their opinion to a serious discussion on current events. Or, like Katherine, dodge around a flirtatious exchange with emoticons and clever keystrokes.

I call Katherine a week later. “How’s the whole on-line dating thing going?” She exhales into the phone, sharply. “Met a few guys and I’ve talked to them on IM and stuff, but I don’t know. I did, however, meet a guy at McDuffy’s on Friday. We talked the whole night and we’ve been texting a lot. I think he’s into me.” There are many things I could say but I ask one question, “When are you going to see him again?” Katherine laughs, “Soon. I need to see his face because I think, really, that’s how you know.”

***

Kelsea Nore

Kelsea Nore is a graduate student at the University of Nebraska-Omaha studying Creative Nonfiction. She is a regular contributor to NEBRASKAland Magazine.

Not long ago, at the onset of National Novel Writing Month, Salon’s Laura Miller received a lot of flak for her article, “Better yet, don’t write that NaNo.” In a response posted in The Los Angeles Times, columnist Carolyn Kellogg called Miller’s argument “at best wrongheaded, and at worst, smallhearted.” A multitude of comments followed Kellogg’s article, labeling Miller as “mean-spirited” and “an insecure whiner.” Miller herself posted a reply, defending her position:

My point is not that NaNoWriMo contestants are bad people who do bad things and should be condemned. I don’t think that, and never wrote that. Let me reiterate: I have nothing against people wanting to write. (I will confess to being disgusted by people who want to write but don’t read, but again, I never said this was true of all NaNoWriMo contestants, only that it is often reported by writing teachers and other professionals who come into frequent contact with aspiring writers. Are there stats on this? No — neither are there stats to prove that aspiring writers read a lot. To me, it’s amazing that ANY aspiring writers admit to not reading. Yet I have met quite a few of them myself.)

What I see here is an unfortunate and age-old quagmire. Miller, like all critics, appears to have approached her article with genuine intentions. Like all of us she’s passionate about reading and wants to share that. However, like most critics, in writing her indictment of writers who don’t read she resorted to the critic’s most dexterous talent: venom. It makes for entertaining reading but unfortunately it nearly always fails to reach the addressed party, in this case the 160,000+ writers who attempted NaNo this year.

As editor of this growing literary webzine I want to use Miller’s article as a springboard. In no way do I want to inhibit a writer from writing. Write to your heart’s content. Write whatever comes to your fingertips. I do, however, want to echo the spirit of Miller’s call for readers. We all know that the best writers read. We all know that without reading there would be no writing—at least no writing worth a damn. What I’m concerned about is the passive way in which today’s readers go about reading. Literature—although elusive when it comes to defining characteristics—is not a static process. One does not create a book from nothing and cast it out back into that nothing. Literature is an interconnected network of writers and of course readers. It’s not a straight line from writer to reader but a tensile and trembling web on which all of us are flies. A writer’s task is to twitch his wings and send a vibration all throughout that web. What often goes overlooked is the task of the reader: to send that vibration back with his own shuddering wingbeat.

Things I Know:
1: The vast majority of Xenith’s contributors are or have been enrolled in some kind of higher education
2: Students read
3: Students react

Xenith could be called many things, not the least of which being an ongoing conversation. What we need from you are your nonfictions—your presence as readers. We’d love to see your book reviews, your analysis, your aspirations, your personal growth from a lifetime of reading. What are your ten most influential books and how have they affected you? What did you think of Franzen’s Freedom? Literature has always been a discourse. Too often it’s easy to think of something as final once it’s published. What we’ve forgotten is that print and web are only the beginning of a long conversation. Today we invite you to come over and chat. Xenith is not just a magazine for writers—but also dedicated to the boisterous art of reading. We all love books. If we didn’t love books we wouldn’t be here. It’s time to start talking about them.

Send articles, essays, reviews—any nonfictions—to: patrick.nathan@gmail.com.

We look forward to hearing from you.

He sits, staring into the fire. He ponders this mysterious gift given by the gods.

Weary from a day’s work, he sighs. The thought of carrying one more load evokes a groan. His back throbs. He rues the remnants of the carcass that lie wasting in the field. He thinks of the various uses he could make of the largest bones, if only he had strength to carry them. If only his sons were a just a little older, able to assist.

If only. If only there were some way to move the bones across the field without having to carry or drag them. If only he could get them off the ground, perhaps sitting atop….

A spark. In moments, his entire brain is aflame. A sleepless night in his cave ensues, and with the new day dawns a new era for his species.

*

She sits, staring into the fire. She ponders the torment on her son’s face as he burns there.

She knows he is innocent. He was not even in the village when the chief’s daughter was brutally raped and killed. But the grief of the bereaved father would not be tempered. The suggestion of this child, her son, as the perpetrator was no sooner heard than believed, no sooner believed than avenged.

The wheels of justice rolled swiftly, grinding her innocent boy in their unstoppable haste. And with the dusk, a new feeling of desolation and hopelessness falls upon her.

*

The greatest love of a creative mind is a difficult dilemma. When met with a seemingly unsolvable problem, an active mind kicks it up a gear, rolling along at blazing speeds. No task is too daunting for creative thinkers. Such minds can toil for endless hours until a way is found around any obstacle blocking the path ahead.

The old saying would have us believe that necessity is the mother of invention. It is somewhat ironic, then, that humankind’s most celebrated inventions often seem to spring not from needs, but from our desire to make life easier. What, for instance, led to our cleverest creation to date, the wheel? It was not a need precisely, but a desire to save ourselves a little effort.

It might be said, in fact, that our cleverness in inventing the wheel created a true necessity — the need for brakes.

*

As much as any mythological figure, Sisyphus endures the weight of heaven’s sagacious judgments, just moving along, constantly going on about his journey. A journey without destination, perpetual motion without progress — indeed, without objective. Always unable to reach any goal, and equally unable to stop, Sisyphus epitomizes a wasted life.

Wise gods, to understand the torture of endless, pointless movement.

*

Knowledge flourishes in our times. Possessors of information abound. Indeed, we’ve known ourselves to be living in “The Information Age” for more than a decade now. A savvy person has never been better positioned to gain knowledge than she is in this era, with seemingly infinite amounts of information available for perusal all day every day. And, best of all, in our time knowledge can be acquired on demand at a moment’s notice. Through the proliferation of information, technology and advancement thrive. In return, technology, driven by our collective wealth of knowledge, now makes that same knowledge more readily accessible than ever before.

Knowledge, like any good tool, is really only there to perform a task for which it is particularly suited. And the specialized work of knowledge is progress. Without emphasis on the practical side of knowledge, we would all still be sitting in our caves contemplating, rather than getting out and inventing the wheel. Knowledge is at its best when it is active. To acquire wisdom, on the other hand, one must stop and be still. The flurry of activity that knowledge and technology produce are often the very obstacles that stand in our way in a quest for wisdom.

For all the creative power of knowledge, it is equally able to destroy. It is the job of wisdom to bridle the destructive power of knowledge’s achievements before our wings melt in the heat of the too-near sun.

*

Knowledge exists to empower those who wield it. Marlowe’s Faustus receives the knowledge and ultimate power he desires, only to spend it on mindless tricks, just as Macbeth voices his bitter regret when he finds the power for which he sold his soul “signifying nothing.” Prospero too, in the wake of the tempest he has created, ultimately must make a move that seems counterintuitive. In fact, the magical powers that his books give him reduce him from a position as a mover and shaker in the world, turning him into just another clever trickster — it is his obsession with his books that costs him his dukedom. At the end of his tale, he must do away with his books and learning if he is to return to real power in the community to which he belongs.

So go all deals with the devil. At its core, such bargaining is nothing more than an exchange of wisdom for shortcuts to knowledge and power.

*

Long ago a learned man informed us that there is nothing new under the sun. Throughout history, wiser minds than ours have lamented the loss of wisdom to knowledge, knowledge to information. It is the natural progression of a pragmatic race.

From the earliest days of our species, when we were hovering deep in our caves, the process of using applied thought to overcome obstacles marked us as something different from the other species crawling upon the face of the earth. The ability to reason and solve problems is one of the defining features of humans. The skilled application of knowledge sets us apart from the other creatures who inhabit the planet with us.

Knowledge is, fundamentally, a pragmatic beast. It is useful, practical, and very hands-on. Knowledge, the great producer of technology, gets things rolling.

But wisdom is rooted in contemplation. It grows out of periods of thought, questioning, and consideration. It observes, it questions, and it processes long before it is quite seen in action. Indeed, it may often be most evident in its inaction.

Knowledge is bound to be forever celebrated for the ease it brings to our lives through technological advances. Wisdom, with its unassuming — indeed, nearly invisible — nature, is much easier to ignore.

*

Shall we, then, like Faustus curse our Wittenbergs and our books? Should we lament the learning passed to us by those who have gone before?

To do so would be perhaps the greatest folly of all. But to plow forward headlong, untempered by wisdom, does disservice to the very tradition that has brought us to the heights at which we now stand, surveying the kingdoms of the world spread before us. It is in our hands how we will answer the tempter’s voice.

*

Knowledge is acquired through study, sometimes rigourous and sometimes so simple as to seem natural. For the acquisition of wisdom, study might be useful, but study alone is always insufficient. Wisdom requires reflection and contemplation, along with a desire for something lying both beneath and beyond the practical utility attached to one’s studies.

Francis Bacon says, “Studies serve for delight, for ornament, for ability.” To settle for one of the three does an injustice to the work required for effective study.

Who more than Caliban knows what it is to acquire knowledge, but fail to employ it for anything more than the most trivial endeavours? His empty boasts are amongst the Bard’s best-known lines: “You taught me language; and my profit on’t / Is, I know how to curse.”

*

It seems that humans might have two types of desires that are sometimes in conflict, the desire for the ease and convenience brought by technology’s advancements on one hand, and the desire for safety on the other. Fortunately, humans also have the capacity to address both sets of desires. We possess knowledge for those times when we want to make life easier, and wisdom for the times when we want to keep it safe. It takes knowledge to make a wheel; wisdom recognizes the corresponding need for brakes.

We would not with Faustus, then, curse our learning and advancements. But we might do well to learn from him a thing or two about the cost of hubris.

*

The prophet steps out of the cave beside the Kebar River. Before him images flash, attempts to reveal mysteries beyond the human mind.

A wheel turns, intersecting another wheel, each covered with eyes. Three more, identical to this shining chrysolite apparatus, likewise endlessly spin. Each rises and settles back to the ground, in unison with the beast whose spirit lives inside the wheels.

The prophet covers his head and falls to the ground. “Stop,” he pleads. “I am but a son of the earth.”

In a distant land, an eagle swoops down to the figure chained to the top of a rock, hungry for the taste of liver.

***

Shelly Bryant

Shelly splits her time between Singapore and Shanghai, sometimes teaching English literature, sometimes studying Chinese language, and always writing poetry. Shelly serves as the Book Reviews Editor for the online literary magazine Sloth Jockey, and her poems have appeared in numerous print and online magazines. She is the author of two poetry collections, Cyborg Chimera and Under the Ash, both published by Sam’s Dot Publishing, and a travel guide Suzhou Basics, published by Urbanatomy in Shanghai, China. You can visit her website at http://web.me.com/shellybryant.

Like the majority of MacArthur fellows, Anne Carson went largely unnoticed until she received a half million dollars. Unlike the majority of MacArthur fellows, readers are starting to recognize her name. Along with Derek Walcott, Charles Simic, John Ashbery, and Adrienne Rich, Carson enjoys inclusion in a small group of MacArthur poets who are likely to yield more than 100,000 results in your run-of-the-mill search engine. Certainly there’s something special about Anne Carson. In reading her signature collections of poetry, essays, shot lists, and dialogues, we know we’ve stumbled onto someone unique—a true genius worthy of any so called “genius grant.” Her 2000 volume, Men in the Off Hours, reminds us of the many reasons we love Anne Carson, and why, as author Michael Ondaatje reminds us, she is “the most exciting poet writing in English today.” Three of them come to mind.

1: Juxtapositions
As we learned from Carson’s more well-known work, her so-called novel in verse Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson is the all-powerful mistress of juxtapositions. Instead of a winged red monster from ancient Greece living as a gay adolescent in modern day Canada, we get—in Men in the Off Hours—Thucydides discussing the nature of war with Virginia Woolf, Antigone and Oedipus filming a made-for-TV movie, a modern look at the life of Tolstoy. In the series “TV Men: Lazarus,” the speaker—a documentary film maker—explains his thoroughly modern interest in filming a reality series of Lazarus coming back from the dead.

We are left wondering, Why Lazarus?
My theory is
God wants us to wonder this.
…
But if God’s gift is simply random, well
for one thing
it makes a
more interesting TV show.

We are left to consider this as the director goes on to explain his process of putting “tiny microphones all over the ground / to pick up / the magic / of the vermin in his ten fingers.” In all these juxtapositions, Carson reminds us of the importance of history, that history itself is not too distant. She informs us, in “The Glove of Time by Edward Hopper,” of the arbitrary nature of history: “For in what does time differ from eternity except we measure it?” Carson knows that history is not static, that history is open to interpretation just as our most cherished fictions.¹ Her fusing of the modern and the ancient is her own adroit way of revealing the inherent transience in each.

2: Style
A reader of Anne Carson will already know that there’s nothing quite like her style. One might interpret that she’s not a fan of commas, even when they’re technically required to be within the constraints of English grammar. Some might see this as a reason not to love Anne Carson, but for those of us with a sense of adventure she comes through as a fearlessly inventive stylist. In “TV Men: Tolstoy,” Lev’s wife writes of his diaries, “So much here is—may God forgive me— / unjust cruel untruthful dragged up invented.” In “Irony is Not Enough: Essay on My Life as Catherine Deneuve,” Catherine wonders of the ancient Greeks or her students (we never know): “These people seem bathed in goodness, yet here come the beautiful dangerous white rapids beating onto them.” Carson’s syntax is molded into a terrifying lyricism and in each verse we see the urgency at the heart of human beings. Her work is unabashedly beautiful and evocative. The entire emotional landscape of winter is set with a flag that “shreds itself in the icy wind.” Lines like “Wrist-thick on the plain a sapling bends” remind us of our own frailty. The act of writing is a surgery in which “incisions [make] a dull blue sound like silk.” In the morning, sycamore trees “are big, unbandaging themselves.” A reader of Carson understands the English language at its most ecstatic. A writer should be so in love with the words he or she uses that it tears one’s heart to pieces, just like any other love. Carson understands love. She understands language. She knows how to make them torment each other.

3: Insight
Our most cherished authors are those that evoke our most cherished emotions and help us understand who we are. There’s a lot of dialogue in the literary world about the nature of reading—what we get from it, why we do it, what it says about us. Assuming we read to better know ourselves, naturally we look to those authors who understand humanity itself. Men in the Off Hours is Carson at her most empathetic, exploring our best and our worst. In “Freud (1st draft),” we are shown a young Sigmund who, faced with repeated rejections from the girls of Trieste, writes to a friend: “Since / it is not permitted / to dissect human beings I have / in fact nothing to do with them.” In “Audubon,” the young artist portrays our destructive desire to understand: “On the bottom of each watercolor he put “drawn from nature” / which meant he shot the birds / and took them home to stuff and paint them.” After the publication of Autobiography of Red in 1998, The Nation critic Bruce Hainley called Carson “a philosopher of heartbreak.” She summons this reputation once more in “Irony is Not Enough” when Catherine laments her attraction to one of her students:

Girl mends the earpiece, drops her coat on the floor, sits beside it. Takes out her Greek book and begins to translate, as if it had been prearranged. Had it? Deneuve feels a force of life coming at her too strong to think what parts this has or why it should happen. The victim of an ironic situation is typically innocent. Gradually twilight soaks the room, now it is almost too dark to read. Girl is lifting her coat, poised in the doorway, gone. Thanks, floats back along the hall. Looking down Deneuve sees her feet are naked. Moi je comprends pas ça², she whispers to them.

As stated in the list of MacArthur fellows, Anne Carson is a poet. Consulting the dictionary, we find a startling definition of poet: “a person possessing special powers of imagination or expression.” In this sense Anne Carson is a true poet, yet her reach goes beyond poetry. A frequenter of book stores will almost always find her work huddled away in the poetry section—if said frequenter can find it at all—yet Anne Carson uses her experience and her talent to explore other mediums and break down the barriers of form. In a 2000 article in The New York Times, journalist Melanie Rehak notes that, “Her work as both a poet and scholar is based largely on making emotionally plausible connections between subjects, writers—even entire epochs—that seem as if they couldn’t possibly inform one another.” With her aforementioned juxtapositions and her experimentation with various genres, this couldn’t be more accurate. Carson reminds us what it means to go on living as a part of our rich history, but more importantly she reminds us of the real pleasure in reading—its thrills and its unadulterated rapture. As is true with all of her collections, Men in the Off Hours is not to be missed.

***
1: For more information on the transience of ancient history, see Hannah E. V. Čulík’s article, “History and Fiction.”
2: “I don’t understand it.” (Fr)

Things are happening at Xenith. As we approach the last days of autumn we’re all becoming much more productive. Nature is becoming less forgiving. Our response: write more. All the excitement we’ve seen over the last few weeks has left me hungry for more. As Xenith’s managing editor, it goes without saying that I’d like to see the community and the magazine grow. I’d like to see more writers.

We’ve had remarkable success with our creative contributions. I’m very happy with the poetry and the fiction and the experimental work we’ve published and I’m glad those pieces have had a chance to spark discussion. Now I think it’s time to enhance our other offerings.

Xenith is currently looking for new staff writers. Over the last few months we’ve returned to our core culture: writing. We want more writers writing about writing. Here’s what we need.

Critics:
Every magazine needs them, right? I’d love to see a handful of writers who are always reading. I want to know what you think of the latest fiction, the latest poetry, the latest essays. I want to know how you feel about the classics, the modern classics. Tell us what you’re reading and tell us what makes it worth reading. If it isn’t worth reading, tell us why.

Writers interested in a space to share their thoughts about books should contact me at patrick.nathan@gmail.com. Please include the term “Book Reviews” or “Book Critic” in the subject of your query. I’d love to see a brief bio and a sample review (500 – 1,000 words) of any book of your choice.

As a side note, from time to time I receive queries from poets or novelists looking for reviews on their work. As a literary columnist, you may be asked to review these up and coming writers.

Columnist – Writing Tips:
I’m looking for a writer who knows writing. This column will be dedicated to the art of improving one’s craft through helpful hints, one topic at a time. You can update as often as you’d like, dedicating each new article to a specific aspect of writing. Topics could range anywhere from characterization to pacing to figurative language. Anything. There’s so much that goes into writing that the possibilities are endless. The more specific and detailed the topic, the better.

If you’re interested in this columnist position, contact me at patrick.nathan@gmail.com. Please include the term “Writing Tips” and “Columnist” somewhere in the subject of your query. I’ll need to see a brief bio, a sample article, and—if possible—a short example of your own creative work, just so I know that you know what you’re talking about.

Other writing opportunities will open up in the near future. This is only the beginning. Xenith is also interested in special projects—any series of articles dedicated to one singular topic or process. Embarking on a self-guided journey to write the perfect sentence? We’d love to hear about it. Want to educate yourself by reading nothing but Greek and Roman classics? Share it with us. Know nothing about literary theory and want to spend three hours a week at the library rectifying that? By all means we have a place for it. For queries regarding these special topics, please include “Special Feature” in your subject line.

Some FAQ:
Q: Does Xenith pay contributors and/or columnists?
A: At this time we are unable to offer monetary compensation. All we can offer is a space for writers to expand their readership and garner editorial experience.

Q: Why write for Xenith if I don’t get paid?
A: See previous answer. Even though we cannot pay our writers there’s still an intrinsic value in experience. Several of our writers have used their experience at Xenith to secure columnists or contributor positions in other publications. Plus, by contributing to Xenith, you’re contributing to a community of writers interested in the greater discourse of modern literary culture.

Q: Will I be harassed about deadlines?
A: Not at all. As a columnist we expect you to update regularly, but if you disappear for a couple weeks we aren’t going to hunt you down with a pink slip. It’s hard to fire someone when there isn’t a payroll. We appreciate whatever you can do.

Q: Will my contributions be edited and/or changed before posting?
A: All book reviews and column articles will be reviewed before they are posted. If changes need to be made, however, they will not be made without your consent.

If you have any additional questions please don’t hesitate to contact me at the aforementioned address. I’m excited about the places Xenith is going and I look forward to your queries and contributions.