2011 | Page 8 | The Common

The Cabin

September 21, 2011 Dispatches

In 1964, as a kind of recompense for, or salvation from, moving us to the treeless, waterless plains of Minnesota, my parents joined with Henry, my mother’s brother, in the purchase of a cabin in northern Michigan, and for seven summers thereafter we escaped. It was three months of heaven after nine months of hell. I remember it, vividly; the memories are icons, glassed-in and shimmering like relics of the Church.

The Flower Bar

September 14, 2011 Dispatches

By PETER J. STERN

Shuji Kawashima stood at the door of his Tokyo flower shop, bowing at a three-quarter angle with sharp, reflexive motions to a female customer who returned the gesture. She backed out into the street, clutching a sheaf of flowers wrapped in heavy cellophane. Kawashima reentered the shop, edged his way past a workbench, and ducked behind an impromptu counter. Peering out from behind a row of tall vases topped with multi-colored roses, he reached for a wine bottle and began pouring drinks.

Lit Mag Fair at Newtonville Books

September 13, 2011 News and Events

Event Date:

Saturday, October 1, 2011 – 2:00pm

Location:

296 Walnut Street, Newton, MA

A celebration of local literary magazines, including Agni, Ploughshares, Post Road, Redivider, The Common, and The Harvard Review. Katia Kapovich, author of the short story “The Smuggler” to appear in our upcoming Issue 02, will be reading!

In the West

September 7, 2011 Dispatches

By MICHAEL LESLIE

I remember how the air smelled, of eucalyptus and the Pacific. I was sitting under green corrugated fiberglass panels in an open-air classroom a mile from Santa Monica beach when President Kennedy got shot in the head and neck. Dallas was my hometown, and I started fourth grade back at the scene of that crime. A year later, we moved again, this time to New Hampshire.

My Viennese Cousin

August 31, 2011 Dispatches

By JULIA LICHTBLAU

My friend Alison and I have had a running joke that we’re cousins. When we met several years ago, she said, “I bet we’re related. My great-grandmother’s maiden name was Lichtblau.” Her father, like mine, left Vienna in 1938, but she didn’t know much more. Still, we called each other “chère cousine” for fun. Her father, like mine, left Vienna in 1938, and her great-grandmother had the same last name as I do, Lichtblau. Now I’m very fond of Alison, but never seriously believed we were related. The name’s not as rare in Austria as it is here, and I have a family tree going back to my great-great-grandfather—which gets us to 1811, amazingly. (My grandfather, born in 1877, was forty-three when my father came along in 1920, which partly accounts for the long generational leaps.) Alison didn’t know her great-grandmother’s given name, but her married name wasn’t on my tree and had never come up in family reminiscences. Reminiscence is to us Lichtblaus what watching sports on TV is to other families. It’s what we do when we get together. We sit in my aunt and uncle’s Upper West Side apartment on furniture that somehow made it over in 1938 despite looming disaster, and within five minutes, we’re talking about Grandma’s lover. So, I was pretty confident that I’d have heard of Alisons’s great-grandmother if she was one of us.

Hurricane Alex, 2004

August 27, 2011 Dispatches

By JAMES A. GILL

We sat side by side on the shore, staring into the sky above the sea, as if we could see the hurricane approaching. The same as standing on the porch back home, scanning the horizon for a tornado, wondering where it would hit. But this was no tornado. There was no escaping it.

This Was in Odessa

August 24, 2011 Dispatches, Translation

By ANNA PIWKOWSKA

Dogs lay on sidewalks
escaping the heat. The wind blew sand
in our eyes. Pupils burned. Garbage whirled.
Fruit piled up on street corners,
melon juice staining our skin

Review: The Pale King

August 23, 2011 Reviews

Book by DAVID FOSTER WALLACE
Reviewed by ADAM COGBILL

The Pale King

I saw David Foster Wallace read at Franklin and Marshall College in 2006. He was nervous and funny and an excellent reader. But, as with any writer whose writing I’ve loved, it was strange to hear the way Wallace’s reading of his work differed from my reading of his work. I was made aware that my relationship was primarily with his prose, not with him. More specifically, with prose that he’s done with, that’s been sent out into the world to have a life of its own. So, I will admit that I initially didn’t want to read The Pale King. I assumed it was being released only because publishers figured someone would buy it, not because it was a potentially important piece of literature. (And regardless of what I’m about to say in a few paragraphs about changing my mind, it’s worth noting that at the top of the inside front flap of The Pale King, above the summary blurb, is printed, “David Foster Wallace’s last and most ambitious undertaking,” a claim which, at the very least, should make fans of Infinite Jest clear their throats pointedly.)

Two Lighthouses

August 17, 2011 Dispatches

By JAMES A. GILL

Cape Hatteras Light

We visited the lighthouse on our honeymoon. Tallest in the U.S. It stood right on the sand, backdropped by surfers riding between wooden jetties built to keep the thin strip of beach from disappearing into the sea.

Travels in Spain: A Meat Journal

August 10, 2011 Dispatches

By ALEX GILVARRY

June 17, Barcelona
Burgers Recollected

After the sad burger I had on our layover in Brussels, I vow never to eat so poorly again, at least not while in the European Union. As my girlfriend Ashley and I touchdown in Catalonian country, a craving comes over me that only meat of the reddest proportions, fish of the freshest means, and cuisine of the finest and oldest preparation can fill. Waiting at baggage claim can be so torturous after a long journey, but there I recall that most excellent bite of food from my last trip to Barcelona. The stand out. The thing that made me come back. The McFoie. It was at Carles Abellan’s restaurant, Tapas 24. A “foie gras burger” of veal sirloin and foie gras constructed to look like a McDonald’s hamburger, a touch of home for any American who grew up on the flat beef patty, two pickles, and dallop of ketchup. The McFoie came rare and juicy, and with an artisan’s touch, too rich to be eaten too often, but with flavor so profound that I found myself dreaming of it as my baggage arrived and my girlfriend’s did not.

All posts tagged: 2011

The Cabin

The Flower Bar

Lit Mag Fair at Newtonville Books

In the West

My Viennese Cousin

Hurricane Alex, 2004

This Was in Odessa

Review: The Pale King

Two Lighthouses

Travels in Spain: A Meat Journal

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