Author Archives: Ann Kjellberg
Jesse Ball, “Silence Once Begun”
The Mother of the Accused I said to him, I said: When you were four, your father and I had a thought that we should perhaps travel to different waterfalls, that it might be a good thing to see all the waterfalls we could. So, we began to go to waterfalls whenever we had a […]
Writers: Jesse Ball
One of the most relentlessly and funnily experimental writers of our time
Here is the much-missed David Markson, author of Wittgenstein’s Mistress and other great, unclassifiable works, on Kenneth Bernard, in Little Star Weekly this week: One of the most relentlessly and funnily experimental writers of our time. Kenneth Bernard is one of the most gloriously antic fiction writers we possess. Think of Salvador Dali or Giorgio […]
Writers: David Markson, Kenneth Bernard
“The Mission,” by Joy Williams
A Mr. Hill was doing my paperwork. “What will you take away from this experience?” he asked me. I looked at him, a little wildly, I guess. “What do you think you will learn from the incarceration experience?” he said. “I don’t know,” I said. Mr. Hill wore a pink shirt and looked tired. His […]
Writers: Joy Williams
What Vergil gave Dante (1931), newly translated Erich Auerbach
Originally Dante belonged to an Italian literary movement that he called the dolce stil nuovo. It was a movement that, with a swiftness of growth unparalleled in literary history, conjured perfection out of a void. The flowering of medieval verse during the first quarter of the second millennium in France, Germany, and Spain had passed […]
Writers: Erich Auerbach
For Epiphany, Patricia Storace
Like Homer, Ovid, and Dante, Patricia Storace, in her new novel The Book of Heaven, has produced a great harmonizing of myths into a single cosmic tale. Unlike these forbears, her ear is attuned to the myths outside our hearing—the ones neglected by the bards, inscribed in constellations beyond our horizon. For Epiphany today, our […]
Writers: Patricia Storace
Flight into Egypt (2), by Joseph Brodsky, translated by Seamus Heaney
In the cave—it sheltered them, at least, safer than four square-set right angles— in the cave the threesome felt secure in the reek of straw and old clobber. Straw for bedding. Outside the door, blizzard, sandstorm, howling air, Mule rubbed ox; they stirred and groaned like sand and snowflake scourged in wind. Mary prays; the […]
Writers: Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney
Janet Malcolm’s collages
Little Star continues its serendipitous series of collages by important writers (see Mark Strand, here), with a sample from a new exhibition by Janet Malcolm, showing at Lori Bookstein Fine Art from January 9 to February 8, 2014. Malcolm’s “Abyss” appears as the cover image of Little Star Weekly this week. Her new project, her […]
Writers: Janet Malcolm
“Quitting Time,” by Caleb Crain
In the empty room, he slowly wiped clean the blackboard. Before he remembered that Edgar might have notes in his satchel, it was too late to look at them: a girl was hesitating in the doorway. “Come in,” said Bernard. “Where’s Mr. Price?” “He’s not feeling well.” “He’s sick,” she said, interpreting. She scooted herself […]
Writers: Caleb Crain
W. G. Sebald, Letters to a translator
Enthusiasts of the great W. G. Sebald have long enjoyed the beguiling uncertainty he invites regarding what in his works is “true” in the literal or documentary sense and what made up, and why. In a little cache of newly discovered letters we observe, second-hand, that this uncertainty presented more vexing problems for the translator. […]
Writers: W. G. Sebald
On the production and consumption of pierogis, by Tomasz Rozycki
In honor of familial feasting of all kinds we thought we would offer the great Pierogi Divertimento from Tomasz Rozycki’s book-length modern-day epic Twelve Stations, which we sampled in large part in Little Star #4 and will shortly appear in its entirety, in Bill Johnston’s translation, from Zephyr Press. It suffices to know that Twelve […]
Writers: Bill Johnston, Tomasz Różycki