Latest news with #Mislaid
The Guardian
05-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
On my radar: Nell Zink's cultural highlights
Nell Zink was born in California in 1964 and grew up in rural Virginia. Before becoming a published novelist in her 50s, she worked a variety of odd jobs including bricklayer, technical writer and secretary, also running a postpunk zine. In 2014, with the help of Jonathan Franzen, she published her debut novel The Wallcreeper, followed closely by Mislaid, which was longlisted for a National Book Award. Her seventh novel, Sister Europe, out 24 April, charts the unravelling of a Berlin high-society party – Vogue called it 'a worldly hangout novel of 21st-century manners'. Zink, a committed birder, lives outside Berlin. Hope Against Hope by Nadezhda Mandelstam This is the book that's keeping me cheerful. It is just impossible to feel sorry for yourself if you're reading the memoirs of Nadezhda Mandelstam, whose poet husband Osip died in the transit camp to the Siberian gulag in 1938. She is incredibly wise and stoical on dealing with this Stalinist terror of the 1930s, and writes about it really beautifully, with a deep belief in humanism and a constant critique of using people as means to an end. Reading about what it was like to be on the run from Joseph Stalin, you think, wait a second, I don't have it so bad. Tristan und Isolde at Staatstheater Cottbus, Germany, until 4 May I have seen three different productions of this Wagner opera in three different places in the past year or so, and the hands-down winner was the production in Cottbus, because they took it seriously. It was a straight-up production, which the Brechtian ones in Dessau and Berlin were not. The finale was so beautiful and moving that the audience had tears in their eyes. And the theatre in Cottbus is a beautiful art nouveau building – a real destination – where the best seats in the house are €32. It's worth a trip, and Tristan und Isolde is playing again soon. Vaginal Davis: Fabelhaftes Produkt at the Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany, until 14 September Vaginal Davis is a queer drag performer from LA who absolutely has that ironic, pop-cultural, intertextual aesthetic down cold and walks a tightrope over punk and drag, combining the two while always annoying somebody on either side. She's also a photographer and film-maker, and just somebody who is very creative and constantly churning out material that's funny and beautifully pointed. She moved to Berlin 20 years ago and now there's a solo show of her work – including some large-scale installations – at the Gropius Bau in Berlin. I haven't seen it yet but it'll be extremely interesting. Lit Link, Croatia Lit Link is the most brilliant literary festival put on by two Croatians. They invited me to speak years ago and then again in 2023. They pick different countries each year – this time it's Sweden and Norway – inviting not only writers from those countries but also editors and translators. They rent a van and go from Zagreb down to Istria, and it's just insanely pretty. Last time we stopped in Labin, a jewel of a hill town with an adorable little theatre looking out over the Adriatic. It's fun to ride around in a van and go to these unbelievably beautiful places and then read to the Croatians. Nightingale It's the time of year to hear nightingales, but they are threatened because people keep their gardens and public parks too tidy. A nightingale needs thick underbrush in which to build a nest where no one can see it. The nightingale's song is never what people think it is. It's great by the standards of the Romantic era when people sang in an incredibly sappy way that today we'd probably find unbearable. He's super-horny and whiny, like, 'Pleeeease, baby, please'. But it's important to have nightingales pestering you every night, starting in April, so don't rake up the leaves or trim the hedges; let things get a bit chaotic. Nebra Sky Disc at the Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte, Halle, Germany This is one of these precious artefacts found by accident by guys with metal detectors in Germany and it's apparently the oldest depiction of the night sky that we have on Earth, dating back to 1800-1600BC. I saw it for the first time recently and it's really gorgeous – a blue-green bronze disc with gold symbols of sun, moon and stars. They went out of their way to give it a dramatic setting in the Halle prehistory museum, with beautiful lighting and really good information. Halle is a nice town with an art academy that's worth a visit. Having art students in a town improves it, I think.
New York Times
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Nell Zink Couldn't Have Written a Book Had She Stayed in the U.S.
In an email interview, the author of 'Mislaid' and 'Avalon' celebrated Jonathan Franzen, public radio in Europe and a book that 'raises blisters.' SCOTT HELLER What books are on your night stand? I keep a cot in the hallway just for sleeping. There's no reading lamp. In related news, I sleep like a marmot. Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how). It would be some amusing literary magazine, not necessarily a new issue, on an empty train next to a winding river, with an occasional glance at the scenery. What's the last great book you read? 'Wie eine Träne im Ozean' ('Like a Tear in the Ocean'), by Manès Sperber. It's a trilogy in one volume about post-Austro-Hungarian communist intellectuals trapped between Hitler and Stalin, first published in a French translation starting in 1949. It rocked my world. What's your favorite book no one else has heard of? Stef Stauffer, a Bernese schoolteacher who vacations way up in the Alps, collected oral histories from her older neighbors and put them out in 2012 as 'Steile Welt' ('Steep World'). It's a record of grinding, gratuitous deprivation — especially for women and girls — in the tradition of 'Christ Stopped at Eboli' or 'Land Without Bread.' What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet? The New York Times would be an odd choice of venue to air my conscious shortcomings, especially in writing. Newspaper editors treasure the indiscretions their journalists coax out of me on the phone or over coffee, but you can't expect me to do it to myself. … Can a great book be badly written? What other criteria can overcome bad prose? Ideally, non-writers with stories to tell would all have their personal Svetlana Alexieviches — eloquent ghostwriters who take their side — but of course many don't. If I keep reading something despite an annoying style, it must have documentary value of some kind. What do you read when you're working on a book? And what kind of reading do you avoid while writing? I avoid sloppy English with diction errors. I mean, I always avoid it, but when I'm working on a project, I want my input to be especially articulate and concise. I tend not to read fiction when I'm composing a novel, because I'd rather stay wrapped up in my own characters. Jonathan Franzen has been a champion of your work. Why do so many people rag on him? Nobody wants to punch down, and he's the best. Q.E.D.! — Just kidding. He speaks his mind and takes flak for it. It's not like he suffers in silence; he writes pointed essays and gives hair-raising interviews. It only seems one-sided because he's not on social media, where the ragging takes place. 'Sister Europe' is the story of a party that doesn't stop. Do you have a favorite party scene? Williamsburg, Va., in the 1980s. You once edited an indie rock fanzine. What do you read now to learn about new music? I listen to the radio. Nearly every household in Europe is required to support public radio and TV. It's a regressive tax, but it keeps us in interesting new recordings, along with theater gossip and three-hour specials contrasting the aesthetics of Primo Levi and Jean Améry or whatever. There was a famous case in 2006, when a kidnapped Viennese girl named Natascha Kampusch gave an interview to public TV within two weeks of escaping from the basement where she'd spent ages 10 to 18. People were like, Wait, why does an unschooled victim of unspeakable abuse speak in paragraphs and seem better educated than my own children? And she was like, I had a radio! How would your work be different if you lived in the United States? It probably wouldn't exist. When I lived stateside, I had to work full time for health insurance and to make rent, and I turned out a two-page story every three months. At that rate, a novel would take 25 years. Tell me about a German writer who deserves to be better known. Helena Adler was Austrian — she died recently, at 40, of cancer — and her book against death, 'Miserere,' raises blisters. It would be hard to translate, but doable. She was known for portrayals of backward mountain hamlets that make 'Hillbilly Elegy' look like 'Eloise.' You're organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite? Emily Brontë and Lord Byron, with Jessi Jezewska Stevens — a younger writer I happen to know — as a fellow beneficiary and witness, since obviously I won't be seeing Brontë or Byron again. If Byron storms out after five minutes because we don't walk in beauty like the night, no big deal. Brontë built 'Wuthering Heights' around a Byronic hero, so I'm sure she'd get a kick out of meeting him. Plus they were both native speakers of modern English who died young enough to be resurrected hot and hungry.
