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Venus's Flytrap 维纳斯捕蝇草
4区 文学
SEWANEE REVIEW Pub Date : 2024-08-09 DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a934393
John Jeremiah Sullivan
{"title":"Venus's Flytrap","authors":"John Jeremiah Sullivan","doi":"10.1353/sew.2024.a934393","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a934393","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Venus's Flytrap <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> John Jeremiah Sullivan (bio) </li> </ul> <p>\"This plant,\" wrote Darwin, \"is one of the most wonderful in the world.\" He was talking about the Venus flytrap, Latin name <em>Dionaea muscipula</em>. That's its Linnaean binomial, anyway—an irony, seeing as how Linnaeus Doubted its existence, as \"against the order of nature as willed by God.\" Dionaea in Greek is Dione's daughter, Aphrodite—or, in Latin, Venus, A somewhat roundabout and epithetical way of indicating the goddess. That second word, <em>muscipula</em>, is odd. It can mean flytrap or mousetrap. The former would descend from the Latin <em>musca</em>; the latter, from <em>mus</em>. There are no reported cases of a Venus flytrap's having eaten a mouse. In the jungles of Borneo grows a carnivorous plant that can eat rodents, The giant montane pitcher plant. It has deep traps, in the shape of urns. Mainly it eats the rodents' feces, but every so often one does tumble in. A flytrap might occasionally catch a tadpole, under freak circumstances. Mostly they eat spiders, beetles, ants, grasshoppers, and flies, of course. Flytraps secrete a juice that calls like Turkish Delight to the hapless prey. The plant is named for Venus because its trap, the <em>lobes</em>, resemble labia, Or at least they can be plausibly imagined to resemble a woman's labia, Perhaps in the tumescent state that with certain women attends desire. Its first name, in the 18th-century botanical world, was <em>tippitytwitchet</em>, Which also contains, supposedly, an obscure vagina joke of some kind. That was a randy circle of obsessives, the early colonial plant-collectors. They had another, less erotically charged name too: <em>Catch Fly sensitive</em>. Sensitives are plants that react to touch—the Venus flytrap is only one. The trait has evolved in many parts of the plant kingdom and the world. I will try to describe for you, as we go, a few of the more novel species. For instance, there's a plant known as the shame plant, <em>Mimosa pudica</em>, Also called sensitive plant. It has startling leaves that shrink from touch. <strong>[End Page 367]</strong> They make themselves look like unsavory twigs, a mode of camouflage. All Venus flytraps are native to the area where I live. They seriously are. They evolved here, in southeastern North Carolina, around Wilmington, And this is the only place on earth where those plants occur in the wild. Very old people say you used to be able to find them all over the place, But today their range is mainly limited to a handful of nature preserves. I know of a secret spot, at the edge of a marsh, behind an old cemetery. I say, \"secret,\" but probably the local university botanists know about it. I have never seen anyone there, though, or any signs of site-monitoring. The city officials may deem it best just to act like the place","PeriodicalId":43824,"journal":{"name":"SEWANEE REVIEW","volume":"57 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141935374","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
America's Museum 美国博物馆
4区 文学
SEWANEE REVIEW Pub Date : 2024-08-09 DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a934399
Chase Culler
{"title":"America's Museum","authors":"Chase Culler","doi":"10.1353/sew.2024.a934399","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a934399","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> America's Museum <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Chase Culler (bio) </li> </ul> <p>The email came to me in the basement of what I then called my life: unemployed, twenty-three years old, still living too close to campus. <em>Looking to travel the globe? Become a Program Advisor for Stoddard's pre-college tours</em>.</p> <p>My parents were thrilled to hear their eldest would travel Europe. Really any job would do; it helped that this one was glamorous. Lately I had begun calling home for money, not understanding the ruckus it caused. My father said he wished I lived closer, probably so he could place both his lumpy hands on my shoulders and sigh. College had duped me into believing I was like everyone else, meaning I had forgotten I was lower-middle-class with parents who didn't travel. My mother had terrible agoraphobia and had only flown once, to a skincare conference in Atlanta she'd spent in the convention center bathroom. She bought a travel book of UNESCO sites from a bargain store for $3.99 and said I had to sign the ones I had visited by Christmastime.</p> <p>I knew the job must suck doorknobs from the way the ladies in the Stoddard study-abroad office doted on me. Did I smoke? No. <strong>[End Page 445]</strong> Did I drink? Only socially. Did I use drugs? I couldn't afford them. Did I have sex with random women? No, and they didn't need to know I had sex with random men. Did I have a passport? That part was flexible. I was offered the job immediately. Seventeen kids, seventeen years old; seven boys (thank God only seven) and ten girls for seven weeks abroad. As my passport documentation changed hands, I spent weeks in the office folding itineraries, annotating a schedule with little stars for our dinners and asterisks for lunches.</p> <p>Turns out I had signed up for a nunnery. No drinking, no smoking, no strangers on our floors. The kids needed me sober, but all the time? Yes. I also had to control the budget, wield the credit cards, make museum appointments and meal reservations, and pull emergency cash from ATMs. I laminated cards for students with allergies to nuts, seeds, fruit, latex. I printed out the phrase <em>fish and vegetables okay</em> in ten languages, which was how I became an international citizen.</p> <p>The office ladies explained I'd be assigned a professor, but I never once saw him on campus. He was a philosophy guy named Gareth Sorensen. I'd never taken a class with him, or even heard of him, which concerned me. Philosophy resided on the top floor of the humanities building where it beheld all of campus from its great, thoughtful promontory; Gareth was up there somewhere watching me from his office. I emailed him and he never got back to me, and when I discussed this later with Study Abroad, they laughed in my face. Gareth Sorensen has worked on this program for a decade, they said. He had a new c","PeriodicalId":43824,"journal":{"name":"SEWANEE REVIEW","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141935381","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Mrs. Flowers 花夫人
4区 文学
SEWANEE REVIEW Pub Date : 2024-08-09 DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a934400
Mary Jo Salter
{"title":"Mrs. Flowers","authors":"Mary Jo Salter","doi":"10.1353/sew.2024.a934400","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a934400","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Mrs. Flowers <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Mary Jo Salter </li> </ul> <p><span>Five minutes before the concert begins.</span><span>I'm sitting next to some old guy—</span><span>even older than I—</span><span>and ask him some idle questions.</span></p> <p><span>Does he live nearby?</span><span>Oh, did he walk then?</span><span>I walk that street, I know his view—</span><span>right on a little public garden.</span></p> <p><span>Nothing fancy, and yet delightful.</span><span>I picture the spring newlyweds</span><span>posing for photographers</span><span>before beds of tulip and daffodil</span></p> <p><span>or under the bridal canopies</span><span>of cherry trees;</span><span>billowing picnic blankets kept</span><span>from flying away</span></p> <p><span>by babies, set down like paperweights …</span><span>but I don't go into that; he knows it.</span><span>It's wonderful the city supports it</span><span>is all I say. <strong>[End Page 479]</strong></span></p> <p><span>Oh, he says, the funds are private.</span><span>Or they are now. Didn't used to be.</span><span>Really? It turns out he was chair</span><span>of the garden committee</span></p> <p><span>for years and years</span><span>and he had it on authority</span><span>nobody else who worked on the city</span><span>budget had been aware</span></p> <p><span>a little fund for the garden was in it.</span><span>Don't rock the boat,</span><span>don't ask for more, or</span><span>that pittance will be taken away:</span></p> <p><span>that's what his source had said.</span><span>And then that city bureaucrat quit.</span><span>He happened to be replaced—get this—</span><span>by someone named Mrs. Flowers.</span></p> <p><span>Mrs. Flowers! The old man</span><span>laughs at the thought of her, the dragon.</span><span>She cut the garden fund at once—</span><span>Cut Flowers, they called her—and ever since</span></p> <p><span>the locals, or those who can, donate</span><span>money or time. A happy ending—</span><span>or not quite that; a funny one</span><span>about killjoys, who always sort of win. <strong>[End Page 480]</strong></span></p> <p><span>The string quartet is tuning up;</span><span>it sounds like whining,</span><span>the sort of thing</span><span>people tend to do on committees</span></p> <p><span>before one person has the sense</span><span>to call for silence.</span><span>The old man and I defer to it</span><span>with a seasoned nod</span></p> <p><span>as people in the neighborhood</span><span>had to Mrs. Flowers.</span><span>And went on waiting for the music</span><span>and planting flowers. <strong>[End Page 481]</strong></span></p> Copyright © 2024 The University of the South ... </p>","PeriodicalId":43824,"journal":{"name":"SEWANEE REVIEW","volume":"113 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141935383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Two Poems 两首诗
4区 文学
SEWANEE REVIEW Pub Date : 2024-08-09 DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a934404
Matthew Nienow
{"title":"Two Poems","authors":"Matthew Nienow","doi":"10.1353/sew.2024.a934404","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a934404","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Two Poems <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Matthew Nienow (bio) </li> </ul> <h2><em>History</em></h2> <p><span>There is no way I can explain the past</span><span>in a manner that doesn't somehow</span><span>free the sparrow from the barn,</span><span>but not before it crashes against the glass</span><span>over and over, falling to the bench. Stunned</span><span>and on its back, I scooped the sparrow</span><span>from the wood and carried it outside</span><span>while it slowly turned its head</span><span>and nipped my fingers with its beak,</span><span>a dun ghost weightless in my hands.</span><span>I gave the bird to the crook of a willow</span><span>then stood back. Even that day, I had</span><span>been thinking of killing myself. When</span><span>the bird finally flew, I was offered</span><span>no thanks, no revelation. Saving that</span><span>small life from the trap of a building</span><span>did not change me. At least not then,</span><span>when I could see no other way to be.</span><span>When it would have been impossible</span><span>for me to imagine ever being the bird. <strong>[End Page 534]</strong></span></p> <h2><em>Someday, If I Am Lucky</em></h2> <p><span>I will be survived by this open acre</span><span>ringed by cedars and firs, this</span><span>meadow collecting yellow light,</span><span>where today, alive, I linger</span><span>in the listening, housed in a shape</span><span>capable of such ordinary song. I wish</span><span>to thank the minerals in my bones</span><span>and all this borrowed epiphany, all this</span><span>endless ache linking arms with sorrow.</span><span>May many tomorrows nest</span><span>in such green valleys. May we all</span><span>accept the ground we will become. <strong>[End Page 535]</strong></span></p> Matthew Nienow <p><strong>Matthew Nienow</strong> is the author of <em>House of Water</em> and <em>If Nothing</em>, both from Alice James Books. His work has appeared in <em>Gulf Coast, Missouri Review, New England Review, Ploughshares</em>, and <em>Poetry</em>. He lives in Port Townsend, Washington, with his wife and two sons, where he works as a mental health counselor.</p> <p></p> Copyright © 2024 The University of the South ... </p>","PeriodicalId":43824,"journal":{"name":"SEWANEE REVIEW","volume":"136 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141935385","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Riding off into the Sunset: Starring Gary Cooper 骑马奔向夕阳加里-库珀主演
4区 文学
SEWANEE REVIEW Pub Date : 2024-08-09 DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a934403
William Gay
{"title":"Riding off into the Sunset: Starring Gary Cooper","authors":"William Gay","doi":"10.1353/sew.2024.a934403","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a934403","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; Riding off into the Sunset:&lt;span&gt;Starring Gary Cooper&lt;/span&gt; &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; William Gay (bio) &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;In the west, the sun had gone as the last vestiges flared in chromatic red and orange and windrows of lavender clouds dulled to smoke gray. Somewhere westward, night was already facing him, and he went on toward it as if he and the darkness had some appointment to keep. For some time he'd been aware of sounds, the equable cries of birds, a truck somewhere laboring through the gears.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The next morning Bascom woke with light the color of haze heavy on his eyelids, heat bearing down on the flesh of his face and throat. His throat felt as if it had been cut with a rusty pocketknife and he had a thought to feel and see, but some old caution stayed his hand. Some things are better not known. He judged it better to enter into the day with caution, who knows what lay ahead?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Or behind. He lay very still and tried to locate himself. Where he was, where he'd been. Jagged images of the night before came unsequenced and painful, little dayglow snippets of chaos. Like &lt;strong&gt;[End Page 523]&lt;/strong&gt; snapshots brought back from a demented backroads vacation. He'd been in a car, six or seven men sitting crammed tightly shoulder to shoulder. Had there been a woman? He seemed to remember perfume, soft drunken laughter. A siren, the systole and diastole of a cruiser's lights. Riding through the actual woods down to a hollow, brush whipping the car, the breathless impact of a tree trunk. The protest of warped metal and a final shard of glass falling like an afterthought.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Running through the woods. One picture of him frozen in air, limbs all outflung and his mouth an &lt;em&gt;O&lt;/em&gt; of surprise and an outstretched vine or bramble or perhaps clothesline hooking him beneath the chin and his terrific momentum slinging him into the air. Later on, the cry of some beast he suspected was yet unrecognized by science, some horrible hybrid of loon and mountain cat. Oh Lord, he said aloud, then immediately wondered if there'd been anyone about to hear it and opened his eyes to see.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The first thing he saw was the sun and he wrenched his face away in agony and saw a field of grass, a horizon of stems and clover blossoms like trees in miniature. A sky of a malefic bluegreen that seemed to be alive, pulsing and throbbing. He looked back into the ball of white pain that stood at midmorning.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;An enormous blue monolith seemed to rise above him, and it took him a few moments to realize that it was his left leg distended into the air, rising at a precipitous angle and tending out of sight into the malicious sky he wanted no part of. As if some celestial beast or outlaw aberrant angel had snatched him up by the left leg to hove him off, found him ungainly or not worth having and departed or simply paused to rest.&lt;/p&gt;","PeriodicalId":43824,"journal":{"name":"SEWANEE REVIEW","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141969054","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Small Vices 小恶习
4区 文学
SEWANEE REVIEW Pub Date : 2024-08-09 DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a934396
Eduardo Martínez-Leyva
{"title":"Small Vices","authors":"Eduardo Martínez-Leyva","doi":"10.1353/sew.2024.a934396","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a934396","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Small Vices <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Eduardo Martínez-Leyva (bio) </li> </ul> <p><span>Snow illuminated the park</span><span> and you wanted to die. That winter</span></p> <p><span>you slept with a saucer of water</span><span> under your bed. Every night. Woke up to find nothing</span></p> <p><span>but the off-white-stare of the empty cup.</span><span> Spelled out your fantasies on my upturned</span></p> <p><span>palms. They were dirty. Unsayable.</span><span> Between us ran a long line of insomniacs</span></p> <p><span>and addicts. Bad habits. Missing history</span><span> we wanted to piece back together. Stitch it</span></p> <p><span>like an heirloom displayed behind a glass vetrine.</span><span> We looked for signs in cards and tea.</span></p> <p><span>In the language our muscles made at night.</span><span> The nearness of stars, in songs.</span></p> <p><span>As the storm hit, reaching past our hips</span><span> you read Russian novels to feel less morose. <strong>[End Page 404]</strong></span></p> <p><span>Said you loved the word 'morose' more than me.</span><span> Locked yourself behind your grin-wrinkled face</span></p> <p><span>which you believed looked like a foreign town</span><span> pillaged years ago. Curtainless. Flags at half-staff.</span></p> <p><span>When the lights finally went out, you tried your hardest</span><span> covering all of this up with your hands.</span></p> <p><span>My voice was the only thing keeping us warm. <strong>[End Page 405]</strong></span></p> Eduardo Martínez-Leyva <p><strong>Eduardo Martínez-Leyva</strong> was born in El Paso, Texas, to Mexican immigrants. His work has appeared in <em>Poetry</em>, the <em>Boston Review</em>, the <em>Adroit Journal, Best New Poets</em>, and elsewhere. His debut poetry collection, <em>Cowboy Park</em>, won the 2024 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry and is forthcoming from the University of Wisconsin Press.</p> <p></p> Copyright © 2024 The University of the South ... </p>","PeriodicalId":43824,"journal":{"name":"SEWANEE REVIEW","volume":"42 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141935379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
False Light: Moral Worldbuilding and the Virtues of Evil 虚假之光道德世界的构建与邪恶的美德
4区 文学
SEWANEE REVIEW Pub Date : 2024-08-09 DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a934405
Brandon Taylor
{"title":"False Light: Moral Worldbuilding and the Virtues of Evil","authors":"Brandon Taylor","doi":"10.1353/sew.2024.a934405","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a934405","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; False Light:&lt;span&gt;Moral Worldbuilding and the Virtues of Evil&lt;/span&gt; &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Brandon Taylor (bio) &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;In 2018, a young nurse living in England, Lucy Letby, was charged with seven counts of murder and ten counts of attempted murder. Many of these acts were alleged to have taken place over a period of time running from 2015 to 2016, a period during which Letby did &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; operate without detection. The yearlong police investigation that resulted in her eventual arrest revealed that there had been suspicions of a possible connection between Letby and an unusual increase in deaths on the wards where she worked, at least once resulting in a hospital inquiry that went nowhere. Letby was eventually moved to an admin position, but after a hospital investigation turned up tenuous evidence, the reporting doctor was forced to apologize to Letby, who was put back on duty in the intensive care ward, where she went on to allegedly attack more patients. &lt;strong&gt;[End Page 536]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I listened to a podcast about the Letby case hosted by two journalists who walked their audience through the legal proceedings. The prosecution laid out their evidence. We heard testimony from former colleagues of Letby and also heard transcripts of Letby's text message conversations with her fellow nurses as read out by actors. This was paired with court reporting on the mood and tenor of the room as the trial unfolded. Next, detail by brutal detail, we heard about the crimes themselves. How Letby was alleged to have injected air into the veins and feeding tubes of her patients. How she created air emboli in their stomachs or gave them insulin which sent them into hypoglycemic shock. We heard about the horrible rashes running across their backs and abdomens. We heard about and from the families too, all of whom were fundamentally transformed by the events described in the case and likely by the case itself. Because how could they not be?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;When Letby was found guilty—I actually have some doubts as to the strength of the evidence itself and the case put on by the prosecution—I kept turning over in my mind the question that most people probably come to when they hear about something this awful: What would make a person do this?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Until this point, I have not told you about the specific nature of Lucy Letby's crime, which I believe push her actions beyond the realm of mere crime and into the realm of &lt;em&gt;evil&lt;/em&gt;. True, murder is usually evil. A person who serially attacked thirteen people, resulting in seven deaths and six incapacitations, is likely evil. But there is something about this set of crimes that qualifies it as a special variety of evil. Lucy Letby's victims were all neonates. The smallest, weakest, frailest of new humans. The most innocent of creatures on earth.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I realized that in my t","PeriodicalId":43824,"journal":{"name":"SEWANEE REVIEW","volume":"58 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141969055","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Husbands and Wives: On Sarah Manguso's Liars 丈夫与妻子关于莎拉-曼古索的《骗子
4区 文学
SEWANEE REVIEW Pub Date : 2024-08-09 DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a934406
Hannah Bonner
{"title":"Husbands and Wives: On Sarah Manguso's Liars","authors":"Hannah Bonner","doi":"10.1353/sew.2024.a934406","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a934406","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; Husbands and Wives:&lt;span&gt;On Sarah Manguso's &lt;em&gt;Liars&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Hannah Bonner (bio) &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;em&gt;Liars&lt;/em&gt; by Sarah Manguso ( Hogarth 2024) &lt;p&gt;Here is a story as common as vanity or violence:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In the beginning, I fell in love with a man. He was an English professor and read dog-eared paperbacks of Nietzsche. He was married, wore a beanie, and sported many indecipherable tattoos. When he smoked, he smoked gluttonously. He shared similar insatiable appetites for food, drink, and sex. I thought he was the smartest person I had ever met and told him so. We fell in love as married men and younger women tend to do: with the voracity of lions.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;What followed were the usual torments: broken promises, disappointments, separations and reunions that ping-ponged between carnal desperation and despair. In response, I drank too much and worked with a kind of Spartan ferocity. I reasoned that if I could catch up—in age, in stature, in success—that, surely, he would settle for our life over his other one. But as I increasingly published and &lt;strong&gt;[End Page 482]&lt;/strong&gt; won fellowships, his career foundered. Sometimes, he praised me. Other times, he withheld any emotional or physical affection for months. Once he went a whole four weeks without saying the words &lt;em&gt;I love you&lt;/em&gt;. Toward the very end, after the end, his apathy was so total it was almost erotic.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;He was an alcoholic, quick to anger and prone to depression. His living spaces were adolescent—his sink glutted with dirty dishes, his bong bowls clogged with resin. He owned copious amounts of the best books, but also &lt;em&gt;Rick and Morty&lt;/em&gt; DVDs, Deftones posters, a plastic Leatherface mask, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figurines. In the corner of his Chapel Hill apartment, there stood an easel he never used and an assortment of expensive, unopened paints. Initially, I marveled at the story behind the purchase of each object. Later, all I could see was how much there was to dust.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Sometimes he was so tender that I enfolded myself in his arms, which were muscular and covered with black hair. My grizzly bear! My guy! Sometimes he screamed at me for what seemed like hours, berating me about an offhand comment to a stranger in public or a perceived slight; he punched holes in walls. Once he locked me out of my house in the middle of winter; panicked, I pounded on the door until he acquiesced, both of us ringing with rage. When friends spoke of fights with their spouses I nodded knowingly; I understand now that anyone can fight bitterly like married people do, that their fights and our fights were of the same fellowship, tone, and degree. I spent most of my twenties and half my thirties ensnared in the agonizingly obvious: I should've left him much sooner than I did. Why I didn't is a question that haunts me until this ","PeriodicalId":43824,"journal":{"name":"SEWANEE REVIEW","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141935382","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Eleanor 埃莉诺
4区 文学
SEWANEE REVIEW Pub Date : 2024-08-09 DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a934402
Caitlin McCormick
{"title":"Eleanor","authors":"Caitlin McCormick","doi":"10.1353/sew.2024.a934402","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a934402","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; Eleanor &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Caitlin McCormick &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;That first day, Margaret learned that Eleanor didn't actually like coffee and that her wife was dead.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;\"My wife spent a lot of time here,\" she said, gesturing to the café's outdoor seating and chalkboard menu.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;\"She died a couple years ago.\" Eleanor paused. \"Actually, let's be specific. She died three years ago. In a car crash.\" Margaret had already known Eleanor was gay, in a theoretical way. Everyone knew Eleanor was gay.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It felt like a foolish thing to speculate about, but Margaret had been prone to what felt like foolishness about Eleanor for months now. Eleanor taught classes that Margaret took with names like \"Sexuality and the Law\" and \"Queer Theory in Legal Studies.\" She casually sprinkled in the names of activists and lawyers and experts that Margaret had memorized in undergrad as colleagues she had dinner with sometimes. Even as Margaret's law school cohort spoke in class about life's most intimate matters—the right to have sex with the people you wanted, the right to marry, the right to raise &lt;strong&gt;[End Page 499]&lt;/strong&gt; children—these were never topics put into the confines of their real existence.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;And now Margaret realized Eleanor had been married, too, in a theoretical way but also a literal way. She had won the right to marry, had a wife whom she loved, watched that wife die, and then taught lectures to law students about these things in their least complicated meanings. Margaret felt breathless, to have this veil lifted in a way that felt carefully and exclusively for her.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;\"I'm so sorry,\" Margaret said. They were sitting on the café's patio, for anyone to see.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;\"It's okay,\" Eleanor said. \"I know that there's really nothing for anyone to say besides sorry. Which is fine. I just wanted to get that out of the way.\"&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Margaret tried to not to dwell on the end of Eleanor's sentence. &lt;em&gt;Out of the way for what?&lt;/em&gt; She felt certain she was missing something here. That she was overthinking, to believe Eleanor had invited her to coffee for anything other than coffee. Instead, she said, \"My mom died a year ago, so I know what you mean.\"&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;\"I'm sorry,\" Eleanor said.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Margaret raised her eyebrow, and Eleanor gave a hard, surprised laugh. She rubbed her face. \"I really am sorry,\" she said.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;\"Thank you,\" Margaret said.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;\"A year ago is recent.\"&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;\"In a way it is,\" Margaret said. In a year, Margaret had not improved at all in talking about this. Sometimes, she could feel herself slipping into a performance of grief, behaving the way she presumed daughters were supposed to grieve the dead. She felt like she had in high school theater productions, except now she should have been uniquely qualified for the role of mourning her own mother. \"It feels like a long time now,\" Margaret a","PeriodicalId":43824,"journal":{"name":"SEWANEE REVIEW","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141935384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Girls I've Known 我认识的女孩
4区 文学
SEWANEE REVIEW Pub Date : 2024-08-09 DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a934394
Urvi Kumbhat
{"title":"Girls I've Known","authors":"Urvi Kumbhat","doi":"10.1353/sew.2024.a934394","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a934394","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; Girls I've Known &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Urvi Kumbhat (bio) &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Nikki&lt;/em&gt;. Under the sprawling banyan tree, we promised to be best friends forever—it was easy like that, in kindergarten. I met her first, so she was mine. We both knew Santa Claus wasn't real. We both loved lizards. We spent all day gathering smooth pebbles from the grounds, hurtling down the slides and up the swings. We separated after that perfect year, sorted into different sections by the Class I teachers, constantly missing each other in the school's din, my rock collection inherited by my brother. I forgot as easily as I loved.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Anya&lt;/em&gt;. An anti-abortion advocate and a good Christian woman, now. In Class VIII, she tried to run away during school because her older sisters called her ugly and unlovable and fat. No one loves me, she sobbed on the filthy bathroom floor. Anya vanished in the middle of PE, the rest of us absorbed in games of kabaddi, in hanging upside down on the jungle gym like bats, wondering how far we could push our bodies. Her mother showed up in a maroon skirt suit and interrogated the whole class. Anya was found in the broom closet, &lt;strong&gt;[End Page 372]&lt;/strong&gt; her face thick with dust. Her mother dragged her home by the ears, hundreds of girl-eyes trained on her retreating back.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Jessica&lt;/em&gt;. Who introduced me to Adi with a smirk, pushing us together at her fourteenth birthday party. You're both geniuses at math, she said, as if that was reason enough to offer up your short, flickering years of existence like a prayer, to stay awake all night talking even when your brother complained he couldn't sleep, to feel for the first time that your body was a living thing, elastic and lustrous. When I saw his high cheekbones and heard his lopsided laugh, I knew. He was so sure of himself, in a boy's mysterious way—unlike me, who changed from one moment to the next.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Jessica had been right. She could do that, pull everything together like she was the only gravitational force in the world. Maybe I was only fulfilling her prophecies, so unshakeable was my faith in her. Jessica's was where I spent my days when I wasn't at school, or bharatanatyam class, or physics tuition, or attending mandated family-time, or with Adi. Sometimes Adi was at Jessica's. Sometimes I told my parents I was at Jessica's, but really, I was at Adi's. They trusted me, never asked twice. Jessica's mother even covered for me when I was running late and my phone had died and my mom called to check if I was coming home for dinner because we were eating white sauce pasta and she wanted to make sure I didn't miss it.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Meera&lt;/em&gt;. My skinnier, older, American cousin. Those were the things that used to matter. We saw each other once a year at my grandparents' house in Bombay, with the other cousins. All ten of us grew c","PeriodicalId":43824,"journal":{"name":"SEWANEE REVIEW","volume":"42 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141935375","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
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