After the fanfare of card tubes and broken tubes came the inevitable deluge of fall pies and the burning petals. The Mexican movie flickered here and the action became too faint to realize, but a wall beginning the chase through the hinterland set the tone for the afternoon. Ships bells sounded; cannons roared; choirs sang: the phonetic season was under way. A system of ropes and pulleys lowered the leading actors into view. Tarzan and Jane, serious but not yet desperate enough began the proceedings as a bank clerk wrapped in blue rags, a faltering impersonation but one which never failed to win them a place in the hearts of the seething mass of spectators. Next a bone came on stage and ate a three course meal. The audience went wild, throwing hats and even chairs high in the air. A volcano followed, a husband and wife duo who executed some delicate foot manouevres against a series of moving backcloths. The finale was a dreary affair lasting some two hours involving long tracking shots of a caravan moving slowly across a vast
Aisha Sabatini Sloan
Episode 22: “Form and Formlessness”
In an essay specially commissioned for the podcast, Aisha Sabatini Sloan describes rambling around Paris with her father, Lester Sloan, a longtime staff photographer for Newsweek, and a glamorous woman who befriends them. In an excerpt from The Art of Fiction no. 246, Rachel Cusk and Sheila Heti discuss how writing her first novel helped Cusk discover her “shape or identity or essence.” Next, Allan Gurganus’s reading of his story “It Had Wings,” about an arthritic woman who finds a fallen angel in her backyard, is interspersed with a version of the story rendered as a one-woman opera by the composer Bruce Saylor. The episode closes with “Dear Someone,” a poem by Deborah Landau.
Rachel Cusk photo courtesy the author.
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