Monthly Archives: April 2010

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Lily Tuck, "Ice"

An older couple takes a cruise through Antarctica.

(from The American Scholar, Spring 2010)

I suppose it’s a bit heavy-handed to sail these two emotionally distant old warhorses into the coldest place on earth, but Tuck is gentle about it. It was only when I put the story down that I realized Maud and Peter’s journey into ever icier waters corresponds with their deteriorating moods. I liked this story, mostly because its strange mix of claustrophobia (the relationship, the tiny cabin) and expansiveness (the open water, the immense icebergs).

Dicky Murphy, "Witness Protection Bridge"

The Brooklyn Bridge fears mafia reprisals.

(from McSweeney’s issue 33)

Sometimes I think some litmags should just put out a porno wherein the city of New York just makes damp, smug love with the magazine and all the writers who choose to live there. Just finally going at it, and dismissing with all artistic pretense. I’m from Philly, so I’m bound to feel this way. Anyway this story — by an L.A. writer, I should point out — concerns “the world’s most famous bridge” (hah) being afraid that the mafia will like have it killed for some reason. Props to Dicky Murphy for keeping the thing under 300 words. Fits the silly premise.This is from The Panorama Book Review section of The San Francisco Panorama, McSweeney’s's big, pretty newspaper edition.