gorse No. 3

April Truth

By Ilya Zverev, translated from the Russian by Anna Aslanyan.

Apart from the story with the deck, there were a few other significant achievements. Leo Makhervax, a crazy young naturalist, was shown a picture of a little bird cut out of a Polish magazine, and told that it’s a zoological mystery, a Papio nightingalis, which can be found in the south of Galápagos Islands only, and sings in a man’s voice.

‘Galápagos Islands are generally full of surprises,’ Leo said. ‘This is the only place where you can find giant tortoises.’

A Writer’s Guide to the Dialectical Landscapes of Dublin

By Therese Cox.

Objects are of course of central importance in Joyce’s Dubliners short stories: think of the coin Corley presses into the palm of Lenehan at the end of ‘Two Gallants’ or the feather in the hat of the plump lady in ‘Counterparts’ who gives rise to violent emotion in the beaten-down Farringdon. In the Dubliners stories, such objects often give way to that favourite old chestnut of creative writing classes everywhere—the epiphany, a dialectical image worn smooth from overuse. But it is not in the Dubliners stories, instead in Ulysses where Joyce truly unlocks the enormous transformative power of the object, and he does it by naming so many specific, verifiable objects and places found throughout the city so as to inspire an urban scavenger hunt—hence Bloomsday on June 16th, when readers take to the streets to create their own re-enactment of an imagined past. What is so limitless and exciting as a bar of lemon soap? Nevertheless, it’s that same imaginary bar of soap— an emblem of the one Bloom buys for Molly—that compels enthusiasts every year to drop by Sweny’s pharmacy for a whiff of that lemon scent, a mass-manufactured Proustian madeleine for the smart set. (Full disclosure: I, too, have bought the bar of lemon soap on more than one of these occasions. it’s very good soap—but no epiphany.)

At Home in the Unheimlich

Deborah Levy interviewed by Andrew Gallix.

Andrew Gallix: I wonder if the discovery of your ‘own voice’ isn’t also due to the adoption of a less theatrical style. Were you more influenced, in the early days, by your playwriting? Many people who discovered you when Swimming Home was shortlisted for the Man Booker, in 2012, had no idea that you had been a successful playwright for many years: did this give you the feeling that you were starting over again as a fiction writer?

Deborah Levy: Yes, I trained as a playwright. Oddly, my two favourite plays written in the 1990s, The B File (an erotic interrogation of five female personas that has been performed all over the world) and Honey Baby: 13 Studies in Exile (performed at La Mama Theatre in Melbourne) are not theatrical at all. Read those plays (Deborah Levy: Plays 1, Methuen) and you will see I’m starting to slip into prose. I can’t begin to convey how hard it was to be a female playwright in the mid-1980s, writing in the way that I did — yes, the whole gender thing — but mostly because I wasn’t writing social realism which was very much in vogue, nor was I writing didactic feminist theatre which was also having a moment at that time. I was much more influenced by Pina Bausch and Heiner Müller than anyone else, though Pinter and Beckett were influences too. Writing for the theatre taught me to embody ideas.

Experiences

have i been stung by a wasp outside

the italian takeaway under the neon sign that spells

out R O M A in pink and blue and reminds me of miami in the 1980s

Selfie

By Paula McGrath.

I have not gone near his shed since that first time. He’ll be in when he’s in. In the cottage, he has arranged rolled newspapers neatly in the hearth, and twigs. All I have to do is strike a match. It roars into flame. I make a wigwam of turf around it, then I pour vodka into a tumbler and sip at it while I wait. When he comes in I pour another and hand it to him. He knocks it back and returns the plastic tumbler to the table with a down-to-business bump.

–Are you ready?

He gets busy now, plugging in a radiator, clicking on a Superser I haven’t seen before. I’m warmed by the vodka and pleased at his thoughtfulness. Rachel and Claire never see this side of Aids, Aidan, I correct. He’s setting up lights, transforming the cottage into a movie set. I take off my clothes.