Vol. XXIX , #2 Herman Melville's ; or The Whale

Vol. XXIX , #2 Herman Melville's ; or The Whale

Edited by Damion Searls

Review of Contemporary Fiction

Damion Searls


Damion Searls writes in English and has translated many of Europe's greatest writers: Rilke, Proust, Ingeborg Bachmann, Peter Handke, Nescio, Jon Fosse, Robert Walser, Kurt Schwitters, and others. He has received a Fulbright Fellowship, an NEA, and a PEN Translation Fund award; his most recent books are an abridged edition of Thoreau's Journal and a new selection and translation of Rilke's poetry and prose, called The Inner Sky: Poems, Notes, Dreams. His travelogue Everything You Say Is True appeared in 2004; this is his first book of fiction.

What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going
Damion Searls
In his debut collection, Damion Searls gives us five extraordinary tales of the life of the mind in America today. "56 Water Street" and "Goldenchain" follow writers whose projects only lead them deeper into the labyrinth of modern relationships and...



Translation:
Aliss at the Fire
Jon Fosse, Damion Searls
In her old house by the fjord, Signe lies on a bench and sees a vision of herself as she was more than twenty years earlier: standing by the window waiting for her husband Asle, on that terrible late November day when he took his rowboat out...



Melancholy
Jon Fosse, Grethe Kvernes, Damion Searls
In real life, Lars Hertervig would become, along with Edvard Munch, one of Norway's most renowned painters—but in Melancholy he is a promising young artist tortured by doubt and unhinged by unrequited love. After agonizing over his work...



Lend Me Your Character
Dubravka Ugresic, Damion Searls, Celia Hawkesworth, Michael Henry Heim
From the story of Steffie Cvek to "The Kharms Case," the pieces in Dubravka Ugresic's collection, Lend Me Your Character, are always smart and endlessly entertaining. The former story paints a picture of a harassed and vulnerable typist whose...