I was going to post something else, but the Japanese series “Sai” deserves a mention. Dark, low-key, eerie – the same man appears in six people’s lives, but you never see the crime when they die. Disturbing acting, and the first two episodes are heartbreakingly sad. www.netflix.com/qa-en/title/...

Watch Sai | Netflix

Six struggling people each encounter the same enigmatic man in different guises. Every meeting unleashes a unique disaster as the series unfolds.

netflix.com

A friend gave me this exquisite copy of ArabLitQuarterly, @arablit.bsky.social which has dedicated an entire issue to Syria. The sectarian violence of communities who have lived alongside oneanother for centuries (see the recent massacres of Druze) is unspeakably sad. This is Noor Dokrli’s “Soil”.

Reading Peter Ackroyd’s Blake. Sobering to think that one of English literature’s greatest poets spent his life in relative obscurity, scraping a living (pun intended) engraving other people’s work. Kafka perhaps had it worse: Blake at least believed in his posthumous fame.

Really liked this latest story of Andrew Bertaina's in the Laurel Review @laurelreview.bsky.social . Loved its surreal tone.

1/2 Aberdeen, Orkneys and Shetlands - from a trip back in 2018.

Really loved this piece by Kylie Hough today. As someone who listens to classical music a lot at night, and who has had their own fair share of experiences in hospitals.

Just learnt I’ve won a prize in a major writing competition. I’m not allowed to say any more at the moment. As a note of encouragement to others:this story – which got into the last dozen of 4 or 5 thousand entries – was rejected by 21 journals/magazines(and only one of those a ‘tiered’ rejection).

I wish there was a magic app which told writers which of your rejections were superficial (all your planning and nuances went right over their heads) and which were authentic (they understood all your allusions/details and still remained unimpressed).

If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. -from William Blake, "A Memorable Fancy"

Finished a collection of stories this week by the Argentinian writer Samanta Schweblin (translator Megan McDowell). Loved them—though each has a certain emptiness at its heart, and I can’t decide whether it’s deep and enigmatic or just a cynical MFA trick. I also can’t decide whether that matters.

Perfect story for anyone who has ever had a pet fish. Or a human father.

Arthur Mandal@arthurmandal.bsky.social · 10mo ago

This week a short fiction of mine came out with Maudlin House @maudlinhouse.bsky.social – it’s called “Fish Tank People”. maudlinhouse.net/fish-tank-pe...

Really loved this piece by Gary Fincke in @bendinggenres.bsky.social this month. A few people had talked about it so I checked it out. Very deadpan, down-talking tone produces a perfect mood. bendinggenres.com/suits/

Suits

bendinggenres.com

Photos from a past trip to Cairo – mostly downtown Cairo. 1/2

Just sharing a short, lucidly-written piece on “Don DeLillo’s Film Texts” by the fiction writer and artist Imogen Reid which came out a couple of years ago in @sublunary.bsky.social . I remember reading and liking this last year, but forgetting to share it. sublunaryeditions.com/magazine/don...

I have no comment to make on Nolan’s Odyssey, or the translator’s response to it, or Joyce Carol Oates’ response to that response. The only certain thing I can say is: somebody out there is making an awful lot of money.

Finally got my hands on the paper copy of this. I’ll share the full story once the next issue of WITNESS comes out. One of two or three stories I wrote inspired by a trip to India.

Recently I walked through Morecambe, a northern seaside town with a melancholy, faded air: shuttered shops, empty retail spaces, bored kids. My father remembered cafés, Hart’s, the Winter Gardens, a pier. The bay is beautiful; the disinvestment is criminal. Brighton feels like another country.

The ending of one of my favorite Tagore stories, “The Postmaster”: a university-educated postmaster befriends a village girl, then leaves for Calcutta. Its final epiphany mixes Western and Hindu nihilisms without quite belonging to either. William Radice’s translation is superb.

I got into London a couple of days ago and visited Tate Britain. Saw a wonderful Whistler exhibition there and decided to share some of the best pictures.

Wonderful piece this week by Mikki Aronoff. Love the figure of the grandfather never met in this.

Congrats to everyone who made this year’s Wigleaf Top 50 and longlist—looking forward to reading them. Out of bored curiosity I went online yesterday, and found a piece I had written in The Phare longlisted for Wigleaf’s 2024 Top 50 Very Short Fictions. No one tells you anything in this business...

A short story of mine, “The Enormous Man”, came out with Quarter(ly) Journal last year. Now that their new issue is out, I feel it’s okay to share it (link to pdf in first comment).

Is anybody else watching Widow’s Bay? Am on episode 4. Smooth script, decent acting, some creepy moments for a horror comedy. The political subtexts are as they should always be in horror – never intruding, just palimpsestically hovering beneath the surface.

Pictures from Chile. 1/2

RIP David Hockney. Bradford lad. Your pools and highways and canyons have always stayed with me.

Reading this at the moment. Really enjoying it, exquisitely written. Almost a third of the way through.

I read old LRB/NYRB issues a year or two late. This 2023 Jerome Groopman piece is grim: cancer treatment as lucrative market, with investors drawn to drugs that “don’t work too well” or cure too quickly—so the patient/customer keeps paying. Photos attached; paywalled link in comments.

About 6 months ago I submitted a story to The Masters Review Winter Story Award (a journal I’d never had much luck with), and yesterday I got an email saying it had made it onto the longlist. Not exactly a win, but nice that it got into the last 2 percent of about 2,000 entries.

Another beautiful piece by Natalie Marino.

Photos from last week’s visit to Eh-Dan-Brah (I hope I got that phonetically correct). 2/2