So I got the latest issue of PEN America in the mail yesterday, #16. Turns out I’m in it! I had no idea, but—cool!
Or rather, my translation of David B. and Jean-Pierre Filiu is: the first chapter from the recent Best of Enemies, an excerpt that puts quotes from Cheney and Bush into the mouths of Enkidu and Gilgamesh, and ends on a tableau comparing the human pyramids of Abu Ghraib to the Sumerian Stele of the Vultures.
The theme of this issue is Teachers. For a moment, I’m going to be one of those annoying people who say things like, that song about breaking up came out just when I was going through a bad breakup in my life, and it’s like the artist wrote it especially for me! But teaching has been much on my mind of late, since this fall is the first time I’ve had to in ten years, and my first time ever teaching French. There are also neat pieces by Harry Mathews, Julio Cortázar, John Cage, Etgar Keret, Margaret Atwood, and a comic by Brian Evensonand Zak Sally. Check it out!