Michelle Curius Liu
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on the atlas — 3
- Annie Ernaux looks back at her teenage self – and sees a stranger | The Spectator1 savers
- Substack5 savers
- “This Is Pleasure,” by Mary Gaitskill | The New Yorker1 savers
highlights — 5
ow can you recover the teenage girl you were? Not just recall the memories and recount the events — this dress worn at that party, the taste of that alcohol on this boy’s mouth — but restore the world in which these things took place, and the self who acted and was acted upon. Is it possible to be your own Orpheus and yank the Eurydice of your former self from the underworld of forgetting?
Annie Ernaux looks back at her teenage self – and sees a stranger | The SpectatorResponsible for these incredible covers so layered and papery and saturated with color
SubstackHe assessed the other people in the room, imagining what they did for a living and whether or not they were happy.
“This Is Pleasure,” by Mary Gaitskill | The New YorkerWhen one opened the packet, one found not cigarettes but five very small scrolls of paper arranged with painstaking symmetry. Unscrolled, they read, in plain black type, “ugliness or beauty,” “truth or lies,” “courage or fear,” “kindness or cruelty,” “love or ____.” The space for the last word on the last scroll was left blank. I didn’t have to look; I remembered it tenderly well—as in when a doctor presses on your abdomen and asks, “Is it tender there?”
“This Is Pleasure,” by Mary Gaitskill | The New YorkerIt seems strange to me when I look back on it now. Because I don’t want to laugh. I feel pain. Real heart pain. Subtle. But real.
“This Is Pleasure,” by Mary Gaitskill | The New Yorker