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← Back to all issuesGranta 126: do you remember
Winter 2014
We are what we remember, and even when we invent, we write what we remember. Every line is a fragment of something else; that is the great collective project that we call culture. In this issue of Granta, writers remember, or invent, scenes from their own lives and the lives of others.
From this Issue
Fiction|Granta 126
Fiction|Granta 126
The Indian Uprising
Ann Beattie
‘Then winter ended and spring came, and I thought, even if I don’t believe there’s a poem in anything any more, maybe I’ll write a story.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 126
Essays & Memoir|Granta 126
The Defeated
Jonny Steinberg
‘Peter Mitchell died on a frontier, not so much between black and white, or between the landed and the landless, as between the past and the future.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 126
Essays & Memoir|Granta 126
The Magic Box
Olivia Laing
An essay on David Wojnarowicz's work, life and archives.
Art & Photography|Granta 126
Art & Photography|Granta 126
Paradise Lost
Yuri Kozyrev & Nathan Thornburgh
‘Abkhaz democracy reminds me a lot of America,’ an Abkhaz journalist tells me over coffee. ‘It’s a democracy of heavily armed people.’
Fiction|Granta 126
Fiction|Granta 126
Thank You for Having Me
Lorrie Moore
‘Every day there was something new to mourn and something old to celebrate.’
Poetry|Granta 126
Poetry|Granta 126
The Common Cold
Laura Kasischke
‘But here we are again, you and I, the / two of us, tangled / up and biological.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 126
Essays & Memoir|Granta 126
Please Tim Tickle Lana
Colin McAdam
‘I no longer see human beings as I used to.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 126
Essays & Memoir|Granta 126
Nudity
Norman Rush
‘I nursed a precocious rage at the stratagems society was employing to keep me from seeing naked women.’
Poetry|Granta 126
Poetry|Granta 126
Cooley High: 1991
Aracelis Girmay
‘Please stay with me as I / replay the last touch.’
Fiction|Granta 126
Fiction|Granta 126
Dangerous
Joy Williams
‘Grief knows how to love them because we don’t know how to do it any more.’
Art & Photography|Granta 126
Art & Photography|Granta 126
The Emily Dickinson Series
Janet Malcolm
The Emily Dickinson Series is a collection of collages by Janet Malcolm that appear in Granta 126: do you remember.
Essays & Memoir|Granta 126
Essays & Memoir|Granta 126
American Vogue
Edmund White
‘Mumbling is proof of artistic verisimilitude.’
Poetry|Granta 126
Poetry|Granta 126
Toboggan Run
Fiona Benson
‘What would I give / to be one of those swimmers in all this snow, / swallowed by the cold and the night’s strange radiance?’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 126
Essays & Memoir|Granta 126
My Avant-Garde Education
Bernard Cooper
‘My response to art was quick, metabolic and revelatory, while my response to sex was a muddle of delayed reactions and missed libidinal signals.’
Art & Photography|Granta 126
Art & Photography|Granta 126
The Damned and the Beautiful: Patagonia Without Dams
Brigitte Grignet
‘There is no land like ours.’
Fiction|Granta 126
Fiction|Granta 126
A Killing
Katherine Faw Morris
COKE SMELLS COLD AND CHEMICAL LIKE THE INSIDE OF A REFRIGERATOR. It’s what back then smells like, now when she thinks of it.
Fiction|Granta 126
Fiction|Granta 126
Off the Road
Andrew Brown
‘She acted as if her own desires magnetized the world, and when you were close to her, she magnetized your moral compass too.’
Fiction|Granta 126
Fiction|Granta 126
Spelling Problem
Lydia Davis
‘A woman from Barnard College calls me and asks if I would please spell ‘hemorrhaging’ for her.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 126
Essays & Memoir|Granta 126
A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me
David Gates
‘It took longer and longer for the next one to come, and then there wasn’t a next one.’
The Online Edition
In Conversation|The Online Edition
Mark Gevisser and Jonny Steinberg: The Granta Podcast, Ep. 86
Mark Gevisser & Jonny Steinberg
In the latest Granta podcast, Mark Gevisser and Jonny Steinberg discuss recent South African history,...
Fiction|The Online Edition
Eyes That Have Seen the Sea
Tomás González
‘He had just finished unpacking his rucksack, new only ten days ago and now a sodden, salty, decomposing rag, when they called him.’
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
First Sentence: Aracelis Girmay
Aracelis Girmay
‘For me, it happens most with early 90s R&B.’
In Conversation|The Online Edition
Interview: Fiona Benson
Fiona Benson & Rachael Allen
‘I’ve always wanted to write from the gut, to write instinctively rather than cerebrally.’
Poetry|The Online Edition
Demeter
Fiona Benson
Up in shorn Drake’s Meadow the hay bales shine. / They’re sheathed in plastic tubing and the plastic / is slack at each end then tight round the bale / like a film.
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
First Sentence: Ann Beattie
Ann Beattie
‘Several times I’ve wanted to title something one thing, but have realized or been persuaded it isn’t a good idea.’
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
First Sentence: Laura Kasischke
Laura Kasischke
‘There really was a moth I found in a toolbox (not as musical or interesting as ‘strongbox’), alive, in the attic, in that box.’
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Foreigners
Daniel Gascón
‘Charles Barr had given me back an essay on The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. He’d given me a good mark: probably thanks to my ten-year-old brother, who’d explained a sequence over the phone.’
Fiction|The Online Edition
After Ida
Elise Winn
‘The year I turned seventeen, the cicada chorus was deafening, as if they were impatient for the real beginning of summer and didn’t realize they were it.’
Fiction|The Online Edition
Car Concentrate
Etgar Keret
‘Women mostly touch it tentatively with the backs of their hands.’