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allegory

The 2020

September 8, 2020

We were passengers forced to jump into the water when our ship, the 2020, after years of creaking, cracked in half and sank down into the darkness. The ship was long thought to be beautiful. For it gleamed in the sunlight. And it gleamed in the moonlight. It throbbed like a beacon, could be seen across great distances. And since it was like a beacon it was taken for a beacon. 

The Story of My Teeth.  By Valeria Luiselli.  Translated by Christina MacSweeney. Coffee House, 2015. 184p. PB, $16.95.

The Art of the Steal

As we discussed some of his favorite authors—from Heinrich von Kleist and Virginia Woolf to Jack Kerouac and Jayne Anne Phillips—Doctorow asked: “What can you steal from these writers?”