Sophie Herron

Sophie Herron on their selection: Last July, I read John McPhee’s Basin and Range for the first time and was immediately captured by the slim volume—its structure, its fluid sentences, the breadth and depth of its probity and its wry and ever-present humor. The titular basin and range is an area between Utah and California, but the book is as much about geology itself, both the movement of rock and the movement of minds that have studied it. In 1785, a Scottish geologist, James Hutton, presented to the Royal Society a new theory: that landmasses were formed over an indescribable amount of time, and that the evidence of these changes were in the different formations of rocks—where one era of rock met another. I’ve chosen to read McPhee’s accounting of Hutton’s search for this geological evidence; a narrative in which McPhee coins the term “deep time,”—a piece of history writing which, it seems to me, enfolds the transcendent experience of humanity’s tiny place in time and, concurrently, love for the work of discovery, communication, and of changing minds. It has stayed with me in the moments of excruciating ephemerality and eternity in the past year. Sometimes both at once. I hope, as a final episode for Read By, it serves for you, also, as a microscope that explodes. Basin and Range, by John McPhee Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Sophie Herron on their selection: Last July, I read John McPhee’s Basin and Range for the first time and was immediately captured by the slim volume—its structure, its fluid sentences, the breadth and depth of its probity and its wry and ever-present humor. The titular basin and range is an area between Utah and California, but the book is as much about geology itself, both the movement of rock and the movement of minds that have studied it. In 1785, a Scottish geologist, James Hutton, presented to the Royal Society a new theory: that landmasses were formed over an indescribable amount of time, and that the evidence of these changes were in the different formations of rocks—where one era of rock met another. I’ve chosen to read McPhee’s accounting of Hutton’s search for this geological evidence; a narrative in which McPhee coins the term “deep time,”—a piece of history writing which, it seems to me, enfolds the transcendent experience of humanity’s tiny place in time and, concurrently, love for the work of discovery, communication, and of changing minds. It has stayed with me in the moments of excruciating ephemerality and eternity in the past year. Sometimes both at once. I hope, as a final episode for Read By, it serves for you, also, as a microscope that explodes. <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/basin-and-range/9780374516901" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Basin and Range</a>, by John McPhee Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Read By: Sophie Herron

Kenzie Allen

Kenzie Allen on her selection: Growing up, I spent precious time each summer on a fire lookout, Sand Mountain, in the Oregon Cascades, and I still return there to volunteer with my father, as happened just last week. Each time I read “deer crowd up to see the lamp,” and “pancakes every morning of the world,” I’m transported back to the mountains, even (and especially) when I’m sitting on the fire lookout itself. For Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, and for me, these places invite philosophy and meditation, and an openness to wonder, which I hope Whalen’s “Sourdough Mountain Lookout” can inspire for others.  "Sourdough Mountain Lookout," by Philip Whalen Music: “Shift of Currents” by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Kenzie Allen on her selection: Growing up, I spent precious time each summer on a fire lookout, Sand Mountain, in the Oregon Cascades, and I still return there to volunteer with my father, as happened just last week. Each time I read “deer crowd up to see the lamp,” and “pancakes every morning of the world,” I’m transported back to the mountains, even (and especially) when I’m sitting on the fire lookout itself. For Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, and for me, these places invite philosophy and meditation, and an openness to wonder, which I hope Whalen’s “Sourdough Mountain Lookout” can inspire for others. <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50467/sourdough-mountain-lookout" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> "Sourdough Mountain Lookout,"</a> by Philip Whalen Music: “Shift of Currents” by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Read By: Kenzie Allen

Alexandra Zuckerman

Alexandra Zuckerman on her selection: In her book, On Beauty and Being Just, it is as if, in Elaine Scarry’s view, the external world has the power to tumultuously expose to us our errors of judgment; wrong beliefs cannot merely be held. Her small anecdote about a palm tree that compels her to experience “being in error” about beauty has stayed with me through the years. She argues that such small experiences guide our instinct to be just. Her palm, its leaves “barely moving, just opening and closing slightly as though breathing,” reveals to her its true beauty. She had denied it even the right to be a tree. On Beauty and Being Just is grounding and gives me hope when it is hard to see where true change comes from.  On Beauty and Being Just, by Elaine Scarry Music: “Shift of Currents” by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Alexandra Zuckerman on her selection: In her book, On Beauty and Being Just, it is as if, in Elaine Scarry’s view, the external world has the power to tumultuously expose to us our errors of judgment; wrong beliefs cannot merely be held. Her small anecdote about a palm tree that compels her to experience “being in error” about beauty has stayed with me through the years. She argues that such small experiences guide our instinct to be just. Her palm, its leaves “barely moving, just opening and closing slightly as though breathing,” reveals to her its true beauty. She had denied it even the right to be a tree. On Beauty and Being Just is grounding and gives me hope when it is hard to see where true change comes from. <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/on-beauty-and-being-just/9780691089591" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> On Beauty and Being Just</a>, by Elaine Scarry Music: “Shift of Currents” by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Read By: Alexandra Zuckerman

Mag Gabbert

Mag Gabbert on her selection: I read Kathryn Nuernberger's essay "A Thin Blue Line," which comes from her wonderful collection of essayettes, Brief Interviews with the Romantic Past. I return to these pieces often because they give me new ideas about limits—what can happen to a poem if it's allowed just a little more room to breathe, if those braces or splints that keep it packed into tight lines and stanzas are taken off? And: what happens to prose when it's distilled down to marrow? "A Thin Blue Line" somehow accomplishes both of these, and it does so while weaving Nuernberger's personal narrative together with bits of research material and shreds of fairy tale. To me, this piece strikes the perfect note between genres; it isn't hybrid in the sense that it checks none of the boxes, but because it checks all of them. And this is the kind of work I turn to when I need to reimagine the boundaries of my own relationship with language, to see how I might shape it differently and ask it to function in new ways.  Brief Interviews with the Romantic Past, by Kathryn Nuernberger Music: “Shift of Currents” by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Mag Gabbert on her selection: I read Kathryn Nuernberger's essay "A Thin Blue Line," which comes from her wonderful collection of essayettes, Brief Interviews with the Romantic Past. I return to these pieces often because they give me new ideas about limits—what can happen to a poem if it's allowed just a little more room to breathe, if those braces or splints that keep it packed into tight lines and stanzas are taken off? And: what happens to prose when it's distilled down to marrow? "A Thin Blue Line" somehow accomplishes both of these, and it does so while weaving Nuernberger's personal narrative together with bits of research material and shreds of fairy tale. To me, this piece strikes the perfect note between genres; it isn't hybrid in the sense that it checks none of the boxes, but because it checks all of them. And this is the kind of work I turn to when I need to reimagine the boundaries of my own relationship with language, to see how I might shape it differently and ask it to function in new ways. <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/brief-interviews-with-the-romantic-past/9780814254097" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Brief Interviews with the Romantic Past</a>, by Kathryn Nuernberger Music: “Shift of Currents” by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Read By: Mag Gabbert

Ina Cariño

Ina Cariño on her selection: Aracelis Girmay’s “You are Who I Love,” first published in 2017, is still so, so needed today. The repetition of the title throughout the poem gives it a musicality that mimics the chants of those who march in the streets. I chose this poem because it calls to and speaks for all of us: those who fight for what is dear to them, those who heal and need healing, and those who give and give even when no one is looking. It’s my hope that this poem and poems like this can be not just rallying cries for social justice, but also love songs to ourselves and to each other.  the black maria, by Aracelis Girmay: Music: “Shift of Currents” by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Ina Cariño on her selection: Aracelis Girmay’s “You are Who I Love,” first published in 2017, is still so, so needed today. The repetition of the title throughout the poem gives it a musicality that mimics the chants of those who march in the streets. I chose this poem because it calls to and speaks for all of us: those who fight for what is dear to them, those who heal and need healing, and those who give and give even when no one is looking. It’s my hope that this poem and poems like this can be not just rallying cries for social justice, but also love songs to ourselves and to each other. <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/the-black-maria-9781942683025/9781942683025" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> the black maria</a>, by Aracelis Girmay: Music: “Shift of Currents” by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Read By: Ina Cariño

Tracie Morris

Tracie Morris on her selection: I have the great pleasure of sharing small excerpts from Brent Hayes Edwards’ wonderful book, Epistrophies. In it, I repeat a quote from the legendary Mary Lou Williams to introduce Edward’s commentary on Sun Ra at the dawn of the Space Age.  Epistrophies, by Brent Hayes Edwards Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Tracie Morris on her selection: I have the great pleasure of sharing small excerpts from Brent Hayes Edwards’ wonderful book, Epistrophies. In it, I repeat a quote from the legendary Mary Lou Williams to introduce Edward’s commentary on Sun Ra at the dawn of the Space Age. <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/epistrophies-jazz-and-the-literary-imagination/9780674055438" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Epistrophies</a>, by Brent Hayes Edwards Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Read By: Tracie Morris

Rowan Ricardo Phillips

Rowan Ricardo Phillips on his selection: The poem "This Lime-tree Bower my Prison'' was written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the summer of 1797. He had been set to journey the Quantocks with a group of friends but burned his foot in an accident and thus was left behind, under a lime tree in the garden of a friend's home, while others––including William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, Charles Lamb (to whom the poem is addressed)––embarked on the anticipated journey without him. Coleridge's poem nevertheless travels with them ("Beneath the wide wide Heaven") and in doing so makes something from nothing, pleasure from pain, and love from loneliness. I love the poem's own subtle journey from day to night unbowed by the encroaching dark. In light of recent times, Coleridge's dream of social connection from his position of isolation feels fitting and is a beautiful example of poetry's unique imaginative power. “This Lime-tree Bower my Prison,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Rowan Ricardo Phillips on his selection: The poem "This Lime-tree Bower my Prison'' was written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the summer of 1797. He had been set to journey the Quantocks with a group of friends but burned his foot in an accident and thus was left behind, under a lime tree in the garden of a friend's home, while others––including William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, Charles Lamb (to whom the poem is addressed)––embarked on the anticipated journey without him. Coleridge's poem nevertheless travels with them ("Beneath the wide wide Heaven") and in doing so makes something from nothing, pleasure from pain, and love from loneliness. I love the poem's own subtle journey from day to night unbowed by the encroaching dark. In light of recent times, Coleridge's dream of social connection from his position of isolation feels fitting and is a beautiful example of poetry's unique imaginative power. “<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43992/this-lime-tree-bower-my-prison" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">This Lime-tree Bower my Prison</a>,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Read By: Rowan Ricardo Phillips

Sheila Heti

Sheila Heti on her selection: I chose a chapter from Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday, which he wrote between 1934 and 1941. It is one of the most fascinating and vivid descriptions I have ever read—not only of what Victorian manners and morals were like, but what it feels like to have lived through history, in particular the great political and social upheavals that occurred between his birth in Vienna in 1881 and his death in 1942. He gave his publisher the typewritten manuscript of this memoir the day before he and his wife died, by suicide. Zwieg grew up in a prosperous Jewish family, and this is the world he is writing about. I found in these pages one of the greatest and most fascinating and sensitive eyewitness accounts of history I have ever read. I love the details. I love the feeling that I am seeing the truth about another world with such intimacy. This chapter has stayed with me since I first encountered it years ago. I am at about the age he was when he wrote it, and though I don’t think the changes I have witnessed have been as dramatic, I feel I know what it’s like to remember a lost world, and to set now against then and to weigh all of it up.  The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Sheila Heti on her selection: I chose a chapter from Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday, which he wrote between 1934 and 1941. It is one of the most fascinating and vivid descriptions I have ever read—not only of what Victorian manners and morals were like, but what it feels like to have lived through history, in particular the great political and social upheavals that occurred between his birth in Vienna in 1881 and his death in 1942. He gave his publisher the typewritten manuscript of this memoir the day before he and his wife died, by suicide. Zwieg grew up in a prosperous Jewish family, and this is the world he is writing about. I found in these pages one of the greatest and most fascinating and sensitive eyewitness accounts of history I have ever read. I love the details. I love the feeling that I am seeing the truth about another world with such intimacy. This chapter has stayed with me since I first encountered it years ago. I am at about the age he was when he wrote it, and though I don’t think the changes I have witnessed have been as dramatic, I feel I know what it’s like to remember a lost world, and to set now against then and to weigh all of it up. <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/the-world-of-yesterday/9780803226616" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> The World of Yesterday</a> by Stefan Zweig Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Read By: Sheila Heti

Hi! Read By is taking a vacation this month. We'll be back in July with more episodes, from more great writers. Thanks for your support and see you soon! Stay safe. 

Hi! Read By is taking a vacation this month. We'll be back in July with more episodes, from more great writers. Thanks for your support and see you soon! Stay safe.

Summer Vacation

Tobias Wolff

Tobias Wolff on his selection: I read three poems, two by my longtime friend and colleague, Eavan Boland, who died last year, a loss that I feel still. There is a tradition in Irish poetry, inflected by the long Independence movement and a certain kind of heroic poetry, that Boland confronts. The third poem is one by John N. Morris, a poem I have carried in my mind since the mid-70s, that has gathered meaning for me as I had my own children, and now grandchildren: the heroism of learning to let go.  New Collected Poems by Eavan Boland   The Life Beside This One by John N. Morris Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Tobias Wolff on his selection: I read three poems, two by my longtime friend and colleague, Eavan Boland, who died last year, a loss that I feel still. There is a tradition in Irish poetry, inflected by the long Independence movement and a certain kind of heroic poetry, that Boland confronts. The third poem is one by John N. Morris, a poem I have carried in my mind since the mid-70s, that has gathered meaning for me as I had my own children, and now grandchildren: the heroism of learning to let go. <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/new-collected-poems-9780393337303/9780393337303" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> New Collected Poems</a> by Eavan Boland  <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Life-Beside-This-John-Morris/dp/0689106696" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> The Life Beside This One</a> by John N. Morris Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Read By: Tobias Wolff

A new podcast where today’s finest writers read the work that matters to them—from their homes, to yours. Produced and commissioned by the 92nd Street Y's Unterberg Poetry Center, a home for live readings of literature for over 80 years.

92Y's Read By

George Saunders

George Saunders on his selection: There are a few passages in literature that I go back to whenever I’m feeling out of touch with something I know to be true, namely that the whole point of life (even, and especially, during, a pandemic) is to get more loving, more tender.  As Tolstoy wrote, “Men think there are circumstances when one may deal with human beings without love. But there are no such circumstances…If you feel no love, sit still. Occupy yourself with things, with yourself, with anything you like, only not with men.”  One my favorite “tenderizing” passages is from Gogol’s great story, “The Overcoat,” and it describes the life of one Akakii Akakievich, a lowly St. Petersburg functionary. "The Overcoat," at IndieBound

George Saunders on his selection: There are a few passages in literature that I go back to whenever I’m feeling out of touch with something I know to be true, namely that the whole point of life (even, and especially, during, a pandemic) is to get more loving, more tender.  As Tolstoy wrote, “Men think there are circumstances when one may deal with human beings without love. But there are no such circumstances…If you feel no love, sit still. Occupy yourself with things, with yourself, with anything you like, only not with men.”  One my favorite “tenderizing” passages is from Gogol’s great story, “The Overcoat,” and it describes the life of one Akakii Akakievich, a lowly St. Petersburg functionary. <a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781519525185" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">"The Overcoat," at IndieBound</a>

Read By: George Saunders

Roxane Gay on her selection: There is this thing that happens, all too often, when a black woman is being introduced in a professional setting. Her accomplishments tend to be diminished. The introducer might laugh awkwardly, rushing through whatever impoverished remarks they have prepared. Rarely do they do the necessary research to offer any sense of whom they are introducing. The black woman is spoken of in terms of anecdote rather than accomplishment. She is referred to as sassy on Twitter, maybe, or as a lover of bacon, random tidbits bearing no relation to the reasons why she is in that professional setting. Whenever this happens to me or I witness it happening to another black woman, I turn to Audre Lorde. I wonder how Lorde would respond to such a micro-aggression because in her prescient writings she demonstrated, time and again, a remarkable and necessary ability to stand up for herself, her intellectual prowess and that of all black women, with power and grace. She recognized the importance of speaking up because silence would not protect her or anyone. She recognized that there would never be a perfect time to speak up because, “while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.” Drawn from her editor's introduction to The Selected Works of Audre Lorde, forthcoming this fall.  Pre-order at Bookshop.org. Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Roxane Gay on her selection: There is this thing that happens, all too often, when a black woman is being introduced in a professional setting. Her accomplishments tend to be diminished. The introducer might laugh awkwardly, rushing through whatever impoverished remarks they have prepared. Rarely do they do the necessary research to offer any sense of whom they are introducing. The black woman is spoken of in terms of anecdote rather than accomplishment. She is referred to as sassy on Twitter, maybe, or as a lover of bacon, random tidbits bearing no relation to the reasons why she is in that professional setting. Whenever this happens to me or I witness it happening to another black woman, I turn to Audre Lorde. I wonder how Lorde would respond to such a micro-aggression because in her prescient writings she demonstrated, time and again, a remarkable and necessary ability to stand up for herself, her intellectual prowess and that of all black women, with power and grace. She recognized the importance of speaking up because silence would not protect her or anyone. She recognized that there would never be a perfect time to speak up because, “while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.” Drawn from her editor's introduction to The Selected Works of Audre Lorde, forthcoming this fall. <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/the-selected-works-of-audre-lorde/9781324004615" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Pre-order at Bookshop.org.</a> Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Read By: Roxane Gay

Margaret Atwood

"Once upon a time, you say, there were germs with horns. They lived in the toilet and could only be defeated by gallons and gallons of bleach. You could commit suicide by drinking this bleach, and some women did." Margaret Atwood reads "Our Cat Enters Heaven," "Chicken Little Goes Too Far" and "Winter's Tales" from her collection of modern fables, The Tent.  The Tent at Bookshop.org Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

"Once upon a time, you say, there were germs with horns. They lived in the toilet and could only be defeated by gallons and gallons of bleach. You could commit suicide by drinking this bleach, and some women did." Margaret Atwood reads "Our Cat Enters Heaven," "Chicken Little Goes Too Far" and "Winter's Tales" from her collection of modern fables, The Tent. <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/the-tent-9781400097012/9781400097012" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> The Tent</a> at <a href="http://Bookshop.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Bookshop.org</a> Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Read By: Margaret Atwood

Rachel Cusk

Rachel Cusk on her selection: Tennyson’s In Memoriam crops up in the dullest Victorian stretches of an English Literature degree, and so the glimmering self-utterance that stutters into life across its (intimidating) number of lyric sequences has the impact - for the browbeaten student - of the birth of modernity. I read it then, and picked it up again much later in life, in a time whose trials and revelations it seemed almost to have prophesied. If this is the most one can expect literature to do, it does it. The lyrics I’ve chosen are the two in which I find the most sustenance, partly for the contrast offered by their two very different readings of the process and moral structure of change.  In Memoriam 95 [By night we linger'd] at The Poetry Foundation  In Memoriam 106 [Ring out, wild bells] at The Poetry Foundation

Rachel Cusk on her selection: Tennyson’s In Memoriam crops up in the dullest Victorian stretches of an English Literature degree, and so the glimmering self-utterance that stutters into life across its (intimidating) number of lyric sequences has the impact - for the browbeaten student - of the birth of modernity. I read it then, and picked it up again much later in life, in a time whose trials and revelations it seemed almost to have prophesied. If this is the most one can expect literature to do, it does it. The lyrics I’ve chosen are the two in which I find the most sustenance, partly for the contrast offered by their two very different readings of the process and moral structure of change. <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45348/in-memoriam-a-h-h-obiit-mdcccxxxiii-95" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> In Memoriam 95 [By night we linger'd] at The Poetry Foundation</a> <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57829/in-memoriam-a-h-h-obiit-mdcccxxxiii-106" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> In Memoriam 106 [Ring out, wild bells] at The Poetry Foundation</a>

Read By: Rachel Cusk

Billy Collins

Billy Collins on his selection: I chose poems from William Matthews (1942-1997) and Thomas Lux (1946-2017) because I wanted to honor two fallen soldiers who fought for an increase of beauty and truth in the world, who also knew that a good poem must at least be a series of good lines—that is, they found their way to the end of a poem one line at a time. In their own different ways and with highly different voices, they both understood the importance of broad humor and subtle ironies in freeing a poem from the claustrophobia of purely autobiographical designs. All poems are autobiographical in that it takes a human being to write one. But these two faced the world, not the mirror, when they wrote, and thus followed the advice that “poems should at least be interesting.” Plus, it’s no secret that they were both irreplaceable pals of mine—as well as teachers by the distinctive example of their best work.

Billy Collins on his selection: I chose poems from William Matthews (1942-1997) and Thomas Lux (1946-2017) because I wanted to honor two fallen soldiers who fought for an increase of beauty and truth in the world, who also knew that a good poem must at least be a series of good lines—that is, they found their way to the end of a poem one line at a time. In their own different ways and with highly different voices, they both understood the importance of broad humor and subtle ironies in freeing a poem from the claustrophobia of purely autobiographical designs. All poems are autobiographical in that it takes a human being to write one. But these two faced the world, not the mirror, when they wrote, and thus followed the advice that “poems should at least be interesting.” Plus, it’s no secret that they were both irreplaceable pals of mine—as well as teachers by the distinctive example of their best work.

Read By: Billy Collins

Nicole Krauss

Nicole Krauss on her selection: I recently finished a collection of short stories, and while writing it I sometimes turned to Leonard Michaels to remember what's possible in the form, and to rest in his fluency. “Isaac” is from Michaels’s first collection, Going Places, published in 1969. I chose it because… why did I choose it? Because it’s New York City. A hospital. Incomprehension in the face of the things that befall us. And because its language—bright, sharp, funny—is live-wire alive in the face of it all.   The Collected Stories at Indiebound This story contains language which may not be suitable for children.

Nicole Krauss on her selection: I recently finished a collection of short stories, and while writing it I sometimes turned to Leonard Michaels to remember what's possible in the form, and to rest in his fluency. “Isaac” is from Michaels’s first collection, Going Places, published in 1969. I chose it because… why did I choose it? Because it’s New York City. A hospital. Incomprehension in the face of the things that befall us. And because its language—bright, sharp, funny—is live-wire alive in the face of it all.  <a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780374126544?aff=PublishersWeekly" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> The Collected Stories at Indiebound</a> This story contains language which may not be suitable for children.

Read By: Nicole Krauss

Colm Tóibín

Colm Tóibín on his selection: When W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory met at the end of the nineteenth century, she, thirteen years his senior, had published very little. She was a widow living in a large house called Coole Park in County Galway in West Ireland. He was every inch the young poet. She had one son, Robert, who spent most of his time in London. Until his marriage in 1917, Yeats spent many summers at Coole. He and Lady Gregory collaborated on many projects, including plays and the founding of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. In 1918, after Robert Gregory was killed in the First World War, Yeats came to Coole, joining Lady Gregory and her daughter-in-law and three grandchildren. Yeats there wrote his two great elegies for Robert: “In Memory of Major Robert Gregory,” a public poem remembering a hero, and the other, “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death,” in a more hushed tone, written for a ghostly voice, attempting to offer his old friend comfort by finding a new context for his death, suggesting balance and completion for the dead airman rather than strife or tragedy. These poems were written in a time of loss, in a place where no visitors came, when the house was isolated so that the poet could work.

Colm Tóibín on his selection: When W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory met at the end of the nineteenth century, she, thirteen years his senior, had published very little. She was a widow living in a large house called Coole Park in County Galway in West Ireland. He was every inch the young poet. She had one son, Robert, who spent most of his time in London. Until his marriage in 1917, Yeats spent many summers at Coole. He and Lady Gregory collaborated on many projects, including plays and the founding of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. In 1918, after Robert Gregory was killed in the First World War, Yeats came to Coole, joining Lady Gregory and her daughter-in-law and three grandchildren. Yeats there wrote his two great elegies for Robert: “In Memory of Major Robert Gregory,” a public poem remembering a hero, and the other, “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death,” in a more hushed tone, written for a ghostly voice, attempting to offer his old friend comfort by finding a new context for his death, suggesting balance and completion for the dead airman rather than strife or tragedy. These poems were written in a time of loss, in a place where no visitors came, when the house was isolated so that the poet could work.

Read By: Colm Tóibín

Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen on his selection: Vasily Grossman's towering achievement, Life and Fate, is a product of his unique access to every aspect of the Soviet society during the Second World War. Though he would soon fall out of favor with Stalin and would fare no better under Krushchev, he was a valued member of the Soviet intelligentsia, survived the purges of 1937, (he had friends and family who didn't), and was the country's leading war reporter. He published the first authoritative, eyewitness accounts of the Nazi death camps—his imagined account of his mother's last days in a Ukrainian Jewish ghetto, an early chapter in Life and Fate, is a cornerstone of the literature of the Shoah—and he had an unparalleled grasp of Soviet military life; the novel is necessary reading for its Stalingrad battle scenes alone. The chapter I've selected to read, which consists mostly of the writing of a religious kook imprisoned by the Nazis, is probably the least representative chapter, but it's arguably the most central. It feels spoken to me directly by an author caught between the great evil of Hitler and the slightly less great evil of Stalin and struggling to find something in humanity worth believing in. Life and Fate at Indiebound

Jonathan Franzen on his selection: Vasily Grossman's towering achievement, Life and Fate, is a product of his unique access to every aspect of the Soviet society during the Second World War. Though he would soon fall out of favor with Stalin and would fare no better under Krushchev, he was a valued member of the Soviet intelligentsia, survived the purges of 1937, (he had friends and family who didn't), and was the country's leading war reporter. He published the first authoritative, eyewitness accounts of the Nazi death camps—his imagined account of his mother's last days in a Ukrainian Jewish ghetto, an early chapter in Life and Fate, is a cornerstone of the literature of the Shoah—and he had an unparalleled grasp of Soviet military life; the novel is necessary reading for its Stalingrad battle scenes alone. The chapter I've selected to read, which consists mostly of the writing of a religious kook imprisoned by the Nazis, is probably the least representative chapter, but it's arguably the most central. It feels spoken to me directly by an author caught between the great evil of Hitler and the slightly less great evil of Stalin and struggling to find something in humanity worth believing in. <a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781590172018" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Life and Fate at Indiebound</a>

Read By: Jonathan Franzen

Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich on her selections: We have become isolated and strangely passive in many ways during this pandemic. These poems shake the reader into clarity and reassure us that our true natures, our most elegant passions, will one day again be called into the world. “Manhattan is a Lenape Word” and  “If I Should Come Upon Your House Lonely in the West Texas Desert,” by Natalie Diaz “Praise the Rain,” by Joy Harjo “The Museum of Stones" and “Letter to a City Under Siege,” by Carolyn Forché  “A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Function” and “Loving that Land O’Lakes Girl,” by Eric Gansworth “Public Grief” and “The Coldness Was Coldness,” by Heid E. Erdrich

Louise Erdrich on her selections: We have become isolated and strangely passive in many ways during this pandemic. These poems shake the reader into clarity and reassure us that our true natures, our most elegant passions, will one day again be called into the world. <a href="https://poets.org/poem/manhattan-lenape-word" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">“Manhattan is a Lenape Word”</a> and <a href="https://lithub.com/if-i-should-come-upon-your-house-lonely-in-the-west-texas-desert/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> “If I Should Come Upon Your House Lonely in the West Texas Desert,”</a> by Natalie Diaz <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/141848/praise-te-rain" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">“Praise the Rain,”</a> by Joy Harjo <a href="https://poets.org/poem/museum-stones" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">“The Museum of Stones"</a> and <a href="http://bostonreview.net/forche-city-under-siege" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">“Letter to a City Under Siege,”</a> by Carolyn Forché <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147078/a-half-life-of-cardio-pulmonary-function" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> “A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Function”</a> and “Loving that Land O’Lakes Girl,” by Eric Gansworth <a href="https://lithub.com/new-poetry-by-indigenous-women/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">“Public Grief”</a> and “The Coldness Was Coldness,” by Heid E. Erdrich

Read By: Louise Erdrich

Terrance Hayes

Terrance Hayes on his selection: I'm reading two poems by Wanda Coleman to celebrate the April publication of her selected poems, Wicked Enchantment: “Things No One Knows” and “American Sonnet #54.”  I’m also reading two of my poems in conversation with her work: “The Things-No-One-Knows Blues,” from my sophomore collection,  Hip Logic, and an unpublished American Sonnet. She was a guiding light for me even before she became a friend. I was honored to edit her selected poems.

Terrance Hayes on his selection: I'm reading two poems by Wanda Coleman to celebrate the April publication of her selected poems, <a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781574232370" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Wicked Enchantment</a>: “Things No One Knows” and “American Sonnet #54.”  I’m also reading two of my poems in conversation with her work: “The Things-No-One-Knows Blues,” from my sophomore collection, <a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780142001394?aff=PublishersWeekly" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Hip Logic</a>, and an unpublished American Sonnet. She was a guiding light for me even before she became a friend. I was honored to edit her selected poems.

Read  By: Terrance Hayes

Elif Batuman

Elif Batuman on her selection: I chose to read from Epictetus because he has always made me feel better at times when I have felt anxious about things outside of my control. Basically, Epictetus transforms “things out of my control” from something I have to worry extra about, into something I get to be proud of myself for not worrying about at all! For Epictetus, freeing ourselves from worry is a heroic feat, like being in the Olympics. I wrote about him once here.  Discourses and Selected Writings at Bookshop.org Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Elif Batuman on her selection: I chose to read from Epictetus because he has always made me feel better at times when I have felt anxious about things outside of my control. Basically, Epictetus transforms “things out of my control” from something I have to worry extra about, into something I get to be proud of myself for not worrying about at all! For Epictetus, freeing ourselves from worry is a heroic feat, like being in the Olympics. I wrote about him once <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/12/19/how-to-be-a-stoic" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>. <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/discourses-and-selected-writings/9780140449464" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Discourses and Selected Writings</a> at <a href="http://Bookshop.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Bookshop.org</a> Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Read By: Elif Batuman

Gary Shteyngart

Gary Shteyngart on his selection: Nothing has ever made me happier than reading Mo Willems to my kid. In these troubled times, when we can no longer see our friends, we need more of Gerald and Piggy and their incredible pachyderm-porcine friendship. There Is a Bird on Your Head! at IndieBound

Gary Shteyngart on his selection: Nothing has ever made me happier than reading Mo Willems to my kid. In these troubled times, when we can no longer see our friends, we need more of Gerald and Piggy and their incredible pachyderm-porcine friendship. <a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781423106869" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">There Is a Bird on Your Head! at IndieBound</a>

Read By: Gary Shteyngart

Robert Hass

Jorie Graham

Jorie Graham on Linda Gregg: Reading Linda Gregg’s poems is a unique experience because not only does one hear Linda’s voice in one’s head—if one ever heard her read it was unforgettable—but the voice is actually inscribed into the lines, the syntax, the rhythm, tone, tempo. This is the sign of tremendous formal skill—that one controls the audible voice of the poem right down to its minutest modulations. This is also the signature of a poem which is a lived experience—not the record of one, or the report of one. If there ever were, as Stevens puts it in “On Modern Poetry,” those urgent poems “of the mind in the act of finding/ What will suffice” they are the adamant, fierce, brave, poems of Linda Gregg. It is hard to describe poems which appear to carry true visionary experience in their marrow. They are, to a certain extent, disincarnate, icy, terse, as-if-dictated. Vision uses abstraction as if it were its natural integument. Vision would seem to use the poet, the poet’s body and voice, as a vessel to get itself expressed, forcibly pressed from the invisible into the visible, from the unknowable into the knowable or the transmittable. And these are certainly characteristics of Gregg’s poems. And yet they are also so deeply poems of the body’s unique knowledge—its intimations, forebodings, fears, lusts and loves. Her poems seem to do it all. It would appear quite impossible for the incarnate to shine so visibly carnate before us—and in so few words. But there she is, as Gregg would say, seeing the vision stand before her. Finally her poems exhibit a fearlessness, a recklessness which seems to be shared by both a way of living and a way of writing—a numinous incandescence, which has to do with searching for the limits of not just what life can be, but also of what language can hold—which might indeed be Too Bright To See. Not any self-indulgent or thrill-seeking recklessness, but recklessness in the name of a deeper reckoning. Until indeed, here she is, always blazing, always alive, Linda Gregg. Robert Hass on Linda Gregg: The first poem of Linda's that I read was "We Manage Most When We Manage Small." I think I read it twice. A couple of days later I realized that I had it more or less memorized, from that startling first line—"What things are steadfast? Not the birds." Her music certainly had to do with the way she used questions and declarative sentences and her feel for the relation of sentence to line, which is very strong and very often very simple. She wanted to make poems that were plain and radiant like the chunks of thousand-year-old marble she would occasionally turn up on the island of Santorini when, as a young woman, she was living there with Jack Gilbert and learning to write. Her aesthetic, I noticed, when I came to know her, was frugal and like the way she lived the practical parts of life. I remember her describing her relation to shopping and to the objects of desire in a consumer culture. She said she liked to go downtown, to Union Square in San Francisco or uptown to Madison Avenue in New York and hunt down the very best and most beautiful version of the thing she had desired and study it for a while and walk away. It reminded me of Richard Wilbur's wonderful phrase about Emily Dickinson's poetry. He said she traded in "sumptuous destitution." Something like that seems to account for the light Linda's poems give off. "We Manage Most When We Manage Small"  "The Poet Goes About Her Business"  "Eurydice" "The Girl I Call Alma" "Too Bright to See" "The Apparent" "There She Is"

Jorie Graham on Linda Gregg: Reading Linda Gregg’s poems is a unique experience because not only does one hear Linda’s voice in one’s head—if one ever heard her read it was unforgettable—but the voice is actually inscribed into the lines, the syntax, the rhythm, tone, tempo. This is the sign of tremendous formal skill—that one controls the audible voice of the poem right down to its minutest modulations. This is also the signature of a poem which is a lived experience—not the record of one, or the report of one. If there ever were, as Stevens puts it in “On Modern Poetry,” those urgent poems “of the mind in the act of finding/ What will suffice” they are the adamant, fierce, brave, poems of Linda Gregg. It is hard to describe poems which appear to carry true visionary experience in their marrow. They are, to a certain extent, disincarnate, icy, terse, as-if-dictated. Vision uses abstraction as if it were its natural integument. Vision would seem to use the poet, the poet’s body and voice, as a vessel to get itself expressed, forcibly pressed from the invisible into the visible, from the unknowable into the knowable or the transmittable. And these are certainly characteristics of Gregg’s poems. And yet they are also so deeply poems of the body’s unique knowledge—its intimations, forebodings, fears, lusts and loves. Her poems seem to do it all. It would appear quite impossible for the incarnate to shine so visibly carnate before us—and in so few words. But there she is, as Gregg would say, seeing the vision stand before her. Finally her poems exhibit a fearlessness, a recklessness which seems to be shared by both a way of living and a way of writing—a numinous incandescence, which has to do with searching for the limits of not just what life can be, but also of what language can hold—which might indeed be Too Bright To See. Not any self-indulgent or thrill-seeking recklessness, but recklessness in the name of a deeper reckoning. Until indeed, here she is, always blazing, always alive, Linda Gregg. Robert Hass on Linda Gregg: The first poem of Linda's that I read was "We Manage Most When We Manage Small." I think I read it twice. A couple of days later I realized that I had it more or less memorized, from that startling first line—"What things are steadfast? Not the birds." Her music certainly had to do with the way she used questions and declarative sentences and her feel for the relation of sentence to line, which is very strong and very often very simple. She wanted to make poems that were plain and radiant like the chunks of thousand-year-old marble she would occasionally turn up on the island of Santorini when, as a young woman, she was living there with Jack Gilbert and learning to write. Her aesthetic, I noticed, when I came to know her, was frugal and like the way she lived the practical parts of life. I remember her describing her relation to shopping and to the objects of desire in a consumer culture. She said she liked to go downtown, to Union Square in San Francisco or uptown to Madison Avenue in New York and hunt down the very best and most beautiful version of the thing she had desired and study it for a while and walk away. It reminded me of Richard Wilbur's wonderful phrase about Emily Dickinson's poetry. He said she traded in "sumptuous destitution." Something like that seems to account for the light Linda's poems give off. <a href="https://poets.org/poem/we-manage-most-when-we-manage-small" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">"We Manage Most When We Manage Small"</a> <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54019/the-poet-goes-about-her-business" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> "The Poet Goes About Her Business"</a> "Eurydice" "The Girl I Call Alma" "Too Bright to See" "The Apparent" <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52233/there-she-is" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">"There She Is"</a>

Read By: Robert Hass and Jorie Graham

Lauren Groff

Lauren Groff on her selection: I've long loved "Sredni Vashtar" for its fury and wildness, and for its profound understanding of the human needs for religious reverence, ceremony, and vengeance. Poor sickly Conradin is a full, complete, utterly ghastly child whose cold final act, of simply making toast, shakes me every time. The Chronicles of Clovis at IndieBound

Lauren Groff on her selection: I've long loved "Sredni Vashtar" for its fury and wildness, and for its profound understanding of the human needs for religious reverence, ceremony, and vengeance. Poor sickly Conradin is a full, complete, utterly ghastly child whose cold final act, of simply making toast, shakes me every time. <a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9788027330973" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Chronicles of Clovis</a> at IndieBound

Read By: Lauren Groff

Meg Wolitzer

Meg Wolitzer on her selection: I chose this story because it’s such an intuitive and ruefully funny close-up of a marriage. My mother, Hilma Wolitzer, looks at the often desperate ways that partners keep each other going; this can be a lifelong work. The characters’ dream of moving from the congested city to the seemingly peaceful suburbs remains alive yet unrealized, a shared fantasy that almost drives them apart. I love “Sundays” for how slyly subversive and honest it is. "Sundays" at Esquire An Available Man at Bookshop.org Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Meg Wolitzer on her selection: I chose this story because it’s such an intuitive and ruefully funny close-up of a marriage. My mother, Hilma Wolitzer, looks at the often desperate ways that partners keep each other going; this can be a lifelong work. The characters’ dream of moving from the congested city to the seemingly peaceful suburbs remains alive yet unrealized, a shared fantasy that almost drives them apart. I love “Sundays” for how slyly subversive and honest it is. <a href="https://classic.esquire.com/article/1974/12/1/sundays" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">"Sundays"</a> at Esquire <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/an-available-man/9780345527554" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">An Available Man</a> at <a href="http://Bookshop.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Bookshop.org</a> Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Read By: Meg Wolitzer

Richard Pevear

Larissa Volokhonsky

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky on their selections: Chekhov’s story “The Beggar” was written in 1887, when Chekhov was 27. This was the moment in his life when he was turning from his early comic sketches to something a bit more serious. But the comedy is still there, of course.  We chose it because it is essentially a dialogue between a successful, well-off lawyer and a ne’er-do-well. It has a delightful surprise ending.  For our second text, we’ve chosen two passages from “The Pearl Necklace” by Nikolai Leskov. Leskov is one of the great masters of Russian storytelling, from the generation between Tolstoy/Dostoevsky and Chekhov. In fact, Chekhov was introduced to him in Moscow in 1883, and they got along well, though Leskov could be difficult. Chekhov has even been called Leskov’s successor.   Again, we’ve chosen passages that are dialogues—this time, even more appropriately, between a husband and wife.  Fifty-Two Stories at IndieBound The Enchanted Wanderer at IndieBound Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky on their selections: Chekhov’s story “The Beggar” was written in 1887, when Chekhov was 27. This was the moment in his life when he was turning from his early comic sketches to something a bit more serious. But the comedy is still there, of course.  We chose it because it is essentially a dialogue between a successful, well-off lawyer and a ne’er-do-well. It has a delightful surprise ending.  For our second text, we’ve chosen two passages from “The Pearl Necklace” by Nikolai Leskov. Leskov is one of the great masters of Russian storytelling, from the generation between Tolstoy/Dostoevsky and Chekhov. In fact, Chekhov was introduced to him in Moscow in 1883, and they got along well, though Leskov could be difficult. Chekhov has even been called Leskov’s successor.   Again, we’ve chosen passages that are dialogues—this time, even more appropriately, between a husband and wife.  <a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780525520818" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Fifty-Two Stories</a> at IndieBound <a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780307268822" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Enchanted Wanderer</a> at IndieBound Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Read By: Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman on his selection: I chose this story because I cannot get it out of my head. Sometimes it feels like every argument we have, every discussion, every idea, is about balancing joy and misery. Omelas is a utopia for thousands built on the misery, and the knowledge of the misery, of one. It is an exercise in complicity: Le Guin makes us create her joyous city with her. We build it in our head. And then it destroys us, and she destroys us, and we are forced to think about what we made in our heads, and how it stacks up against the imperfect world we live in.  Let us all march to a place that may not be there at all. The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories at IndieBound Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Neil Gaiman on his selection: I chose this story because I cannot get it out of my head. Sometimes it feels like every argument we have, every discussion, every idea, is about balancing joy and misery. Omelas is a utopia for thousands built on the misery, and the knowledge of the misery, of one. It is an exercise in complicity: Le Guin makes us create her joyous city with her. We build it in our head. And then it destroys us, and she destroys us, and we are forced to think about what we made in our heads, and how it stacks up against the imperfect world we live in.  Let us all march to a place that may not be there at all. <a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781481475976" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories at IndieBound</a> Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Read By: Neil Gaiman

Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon on his selection: Reading Ray Bradbury’s “The Rocket Man” for the first time—around the age of ten or eleven—was the first time I realized that stories were made not of ideas or exciting twists of plot but of language. Not words, not turns of phrase, but imagery and patterns of metaphor. “The Rocket Man” unfolds to its melancholy conclusion in a series of haunting images of light and dark, machinery and biology, power and fragility. Bradbury, at his best—as here—was one of our best. The Illustrated Man at Indiebound Intro and outro from "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Michael Chabon on his selection: Reading Ray Bradbury’s “The Rocket Man” for the first time—around the age of ten or eleven—was the first time I realized that stories were made not of ideas or exciting twists of plot but of language. Not words, not turns of phrase, but imagery and patterns of metaphor. “The Rocket Man” unfolds to its melancholy conclusion in a series of haunting images of light and dark, machinery and biology, power and fragility. Bradbury, at his best—as here—was one of our best. <a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781451678185" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Illustrated Man</a> at Indiebound Intro and outro from "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Read By: Michael Chabon

Adam Gopnik

On Adam Gopnik's selection: “'How are we to live in an atomic age?' I am tempted to reply: 'Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.' In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation." - from "On Living in an Atomic Age," by C. S. Lewis, anthologized in  Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays. Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

On Adam Gopnik's selection: “'How are we to live in an atomic age?' I am tempted to reply: 'Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.' In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation." - from "On Living in an Atomic Age," by C. S. Lewis, anthologized in <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/present-concerns-journalistic-essays/9780062643599" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays</a>. Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Read By: Adam Gopnik

Hisham Matar

Hisham Matar on his selection: In 2016, when I finished writing my book, The Return, which chronicles my return to Libya after 33 years of not being able to go there for political reasons, and my failed search for my father, a Libyan political dissident who was imprisoned and made to disappear by the Qaddafi dictatorship, I went to Siena. I spent a month in that Tuscan city looking at paintings from the Sienese School, which covers the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. These paintings have interested me ever since I had first encountered them at the National Gallery in London, some quarter of a century before, when I was nineteen, the year my father was abducted. The time spent in Siena produced my latest book, A Month in Siena, which is a record of my looking at the paintings, but also a mediation on loss, love, intimacy and art. It is also a book about solitude and its surprises. I wanted to read to you from a section that expresses this as well as the joys of the accidental social encounter. In a time where we are isolated and told, for good reasons, to be wary of the possibility of being contaminated by one another, I thought it fitting to share with you some of those common old joys of spontaneous and unexpected human encounters. And finally, because we are barred from travel, I wanted to take you away, to go travelling in the imagination together.   A Month in Siena at IndieBound Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Hisham Matar on his selection: In 2016, when I finished writing my book, The Return, which chronicles my return to Libya after 33 years of not being able to go there for political reasons, and my failed search for my father, a Libyan political dissident who was imprisoned and made to disappear by the Qaddafi dictatorship, I went to Siena. I spent a month in that Tuscan city looking at paintings from the Sienese School, which covers the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. These paintings have interested me ever since I had first encountered them at the National Gallery in London, some quarter of a century before, when I was nineteen, the year my father was abducted. The time spent in Siena produced my latest book, A Month in Siena, which is a record of my looking at the paintings, but also a mediation on loss, love, intimacy and art. It is also a book about solitude and its surprises. I wanted to read to you from a section that expresses this as well as the joys of the accidental social encounter. In a time where we are isolated and told, for good reasons, to be wary of the possibility of being contaminated by one another, I thought it fitting to share with you some of those common old joys of spontaneous and unexpected human encounters. And finally, because we are barred from travel, I wanted to take you away, to go travelling in the imagination together.   <a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780593129135" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">A Month in Siena</a> at IndieBound Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Read By: Hisham Matar

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