I'm not counting the Sedaris essay, because it's not fiction, but I wanted to just notate it here so that I remember it. It was a particularly touching piece by Sedaris...it was about his sister who committed suicide this past May, which I wasn't aware of. Sedaris managed to somehow still imbibe humor into the essay without making it tacky and also wrote a piece which was a meaningful tribute to his sister while still being an honest piece about the frailty of relationships. It was quite beautiful...it's called "Now We Are Five."
The short story in this issue is by Haruki Murakami and is called "Samsa in Love." I hate roaches with a passion but I LOVE the art for this piece so so so much! And the art pretty much tells you what this story is about. It's sort of a reverse tale of Kafka's "The Metamorphosis." In this story, a bug (we're never actually told it's a roach) wakes up as a human and has to learn how to navigate the body that he is in. To add insult to injury, a female locksmith shows up to fix a lock at the apartment that he's awoken at and she's a hunchback, something that he finds oddly attractive, and he finds himself captivated by her adding the dimension of learning not just the mechanics of the human body, but having to learn the mechanics of the heart as well. Quite a neat little story :) Makes me want to go back now and read all of these other issues of the New Yorker I have sitting around!
Rich was reading that Sedaris essay in bed one night and started laughing. I asked what he was reading, and he told me what it was about and I apparently gave him a funny look that must have conveyed, "You're reading about his sister's suicide and you're laughing???" He immediately went on to tell me about the names they were coming up for the beach house. :P
ReplyDelete