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Aaron Peck
Aaron Peck is the author of The Bewilderments of Bernard Willis and Letters to the Pacific.

Articles Available Online


The Abyss Echoes Back: Judith Schalansky’s ‘An Inventory of Losses’

Book Review

January 2021

Aaron Peck

Book Review

January 2021

Early in Judith Schalansky’s An Inventory of Losses, the narrator describes the way an ancient form of writing survived oblivion. The soft clay tablets...

Book Review

May 2018

Harry Mathews’s ‘The Solitary Twin’

Aaron Peck

Book Review

May 2018

Imagine a small fishing village on the edge of the world. Its inhabitants are progressive and content. The surroundings...

To Lilia Lardone Summer was ending The air already smelled like smoke, but it still looked clear, sunny The women swept their sidewalks and burned the first dry leaves on the corners When classes began, so did the girls’ fifteenth birthday parties It hadn’t been long since I’d seen my first dead body Tolchi Pereno threw herself under the train because she was pregnant We sat at the same desk, and during geography class she burst out crying, though no one had said anything to her Blanquita Calzolari had called on Tano Buriolo to present his homework, and Tano tried to explain that thing about meridians and parallels They say that meridians are lines that divide the world into halves, Tano said, and Blanquita Calzolari agreed   They say that the two halves are equal and the dividing line is a very fine line, so fine that you can’t see it, Tano said, and Blanquita Calzolari agreed They say that the parallels are the same lines, but in reverse They say that if you change hemispheres and you pass over a meridian or parallel, it sends shivers down your back Blanquita Calzolari lifted her gaze, her eyes suddenly alert   Who says that? she asked   Tano Buriolo retorted immediately, The wise say so   No, that’s wrong, Blanquita Calzolari declared Return to your seat Then Tolchi Pereno burst out crying Blanquita looked at her and asked what happened   Nothing happened, Tolchi said I’m having a nervous attack, that’s all, she said, and started to scream and took my hand, which was next to hers, and rested my hand on her chest   Feel this, feel this, she said Feel how my nerves are turning over inside   I noticed the edge of her bra under her knit sweater and something like termites over Tolchi’s heart I blushed   Go drink a glass of water and come back, Blanquita Calzolari said   Tolchi let my hand go and kept hiccupping in silence, sitting on her bench We looked at her She got up and left and returned after a while with red eyes and a swollen face Early that evening, she threw herself under

Contributor

May 2017

Aaron Peck

Contributor

May 2017

Aaron Peck is the author of The Bewilderments of Bernard Willis and Letters to the Pacific.

Gloria

fiction

May 2017

Aaron Peck

fiction

May 2017

Bernard, whenever he thought of Geoffrey, would remember his gait on the afternoon of their first meeting. Geoffrey walked with the confidence of a...

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Issue No. 15

Translation in the First Person

Kate Briggs

feature

Issue No. 15

IT IS 1 JUNE 2015 and I am standing outside no. 11 rue Servandoni in Paris’s sixth arrondissement. I...

Interview

Issue No. 15

Interview with Zadie Smith

Jennifer Hodgson

Interview

Issue No. 15

Zadie Smith’s biography is one of contemporary writing’s fondest and most famous yarns of precocious and meteoric literary success....

feature

November 2012

Life outside the Manet Paradise Resort : On the paintings of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

Orlando Reade

feature

November 2012

*   A person is represented, sitting in what appears to be the banal and conventional pose of a...

 

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