Leland Quarterly, Vol. 4 Issue 2, Winter 2010

Winter 2010

kate

Erickson Joy

Henry Charlie

Mintz Kendra

Peterson Caroline

Shen

leland QUARTERLY 1

Leland Quarterly Winter 2010

leland

QUARTERLY VOLUME 4, ISSUE 2

Copyright 2010 by Leland Quarterly, Stanford University.

All Rights Reserved.

Giant Horse Printing, San Francisco

Editorial Board, Winter 2010 Editors-in-Chief Miles Osgood, Lindsay Sellers Senior Editors Jaslyn Law, Max McClure, Graham Todd, Nathalie Trepagnier Associate Editors Stephanie Caro, Grace DeVoll, Ellie Green, Lihe Han, Katie Wu Art Editor Johaina Chrisostomo Financial Editor Nathalie Trepagnier Design and Layout Editor Jin Yu Associate Design and Layout Editors Johaina Crisostomo, Katie Wu Web Manager Jin Yu

Leland Quarterly: A Statement on Literature, Culture, Art, and Politics is a general interest magazine that showcases the very best in Stanford University undergraduate art and writing.

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Editor’s Letter Literary quotation is not like raisin cake. This, at least, is what Herman Meyer would have us believe, although it should be noted up front that he operates on a significant bias. If literary quotation were the same as raisin cake, his two-hundred-andseventy-two-page work, The Poetics of Quotation in the European Novel, would come to a halt after a twopage introduction—following, I would imagine, a new, more appropriate title page: The Poetics of Raisin-Cake Metaphors in Herman Meyer’s Interrupted Criticism.

To be precise, Meyer’s raisin-cake claim is really, at first, a question: he asks whether quotations are anything more than simply the raisins in the cake, and whether their aesthetic effect can go beyond the momentary delight that the raisins offer the palate.

Sorry. To be precise, Meyer asks: “Are quotations anything more than simply the raisins in the cake, and can their aesthetic effect go beyond the momentary delight that the raisins offer the palate?”

Two-hundred and seventy pages of argument notwithstanding, I remain unconvinced of Meyer’s final stance. I would maintain that literary quotation is actually quite a bit like raisin cake. Let me count the ways.

Affectation. Surely I’m not the only one to wonder whether literary quotation is not simply plagiarism under another name. If I know the batter to my cake is going to taste really boring, you bet I’m going to put some raisins in it. Put in enough and I might get requests for the recipe. From professors.

Depth. To be fair, I don’t think Virgil and Dante and Milton were just cheating. For those who chew slowly, the taste of a raisin recalls the image of the vine. Levels of meaning. Layer-cake.

Tradition. Ah, but what if the vine looks different now from how you remember it? After you eat the raisins T.S. Eliot has had dried, do you ever think of grapes the same way?

Suspense. A largely untapped potential for quotation, I feel. If there are raisins in the opening slices, you expect the same number in each slice as you progress. How do you account, then, for the fifth slice of Joyce’s Portrait? Where are the raisins of Augustine’s Ostia, after the forbidden fruits of Carthage and Dublin?

(All bets are off if you’re baking in a Bundt pan, or reading Finnegans Wake.)

Breadth. If literature is the dessert to the dinnerparty of philosophy, then even a postmodern host will save a slice for each of his guests. I made two loaves, just in case.

Intention. Actually, is raisin cake meant as a dessert course, or am I supposed to serve it as an hors-d’œuvre? It’s not in the book. Does it have something to do with using golden raisins instead of red?

Juxtaposition. I’m also replacing the walnuts with dried apricots. I forgot to go to the store.

Intertextuality.

Maybe if I garnish the pork-roast with raisins and apricots as well, the cake won’t seem as weird. Yeah, I’d better do that.

Intratextuality. If I had time to make an icing I’d put raisins in that too.

Revision. Damn. Always keep an eye on the oven. What if I scrape… no, the inside is tearing off. This is why I hate baking. Maybe I can just serve the raisins.

Yeah. I’ll dip them in chocolate or something.

– Miles Osgood and the editors of leland

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c o n te n t s

editorial statement 3

ARTIST PROFILE Caroline Shen

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Kate Erickson

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DRAWING

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Helene Jackie Basu

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Life Sam Julian

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Fiction Amsterdam Joy Henry

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Interregnum of Skinsky Charlie Mintz

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Sheldon Jaslyn Law

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Interview William F. Gilly

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Molly Antopol

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Poetry

PHOTOGRAPHY Venezia Caroline Shen

Cover

Watermarked Nathalie Trepagnier

Schoolyard Jin Zhu

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Home Life of Salinger Frank Rodriguez

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Explosion in the Sky Derek Ouyang

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Bitch Karmia Chan Cao

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Woods Jin Zhu

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To Jack...

Kendra Peterson

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Hiding Derek Ouyang

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The Promenade Wyatt Hong

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Generation Derek Ouyang

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Joy Henry

He knew I needed him to talk, so he wasn’t saying anything. I stared straight ahead at signs written in Dutch, with drawings of happy people washing hands for safety.

The doctor came in. He was tall and pale with rusty hair. I imagined him building a windmill with his bare hands, sawing the wood, standing nobly underneath. I kept

myself pop a white pill into my mouth. I was self-medicating, looking past the pale outline of two mute people on orange plastic seats. The buildings were derelict, sinking ships. They were going down, down.

I see you,” I said, talking to him in our reflection. I was holding up my arm. The top two sores looked like eyes.

At the hostel we moved up return tickets, counted out hundreds of dollars. He said obvious I was self-medicating, looking past the pale outline of two mute people on things, “this cost so much” or “the money we orange plastic seats. The buildings could’ve saved.” By now that white powder was were derelict, sinking ships. all dispersed through They were going down, down. me, and his words were slippery things. They struck me and fell off crying even after he told me it was just a without effect. I tried to grasp them, bacterial infection, and he looked at me rolling a joint on the twin bed, when the strangely, as if I hadn’t understood.

Romanian tourists came in. They were It will be cured in two days, with sharing this room, and they stank and cream,” he said again, in a heavy accent. I spoke in broken English. had these lesions on my right arm, quarterYou want to come with us to erotic size spots secreting pale pink water. I had massage?” they asked, snickering. I gotten a cut and been unlucky. stopped rolling and held out the inside of The tourist hospital was outside the my arm for them. city. We rode the train back, past dying “Here,” I said. “Let’s go.” Their faces mid-rises and fences diseased with graffiti. soured, and they left.

In the reflection of the window, I watched I struck a match and walked to the

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window. It had no screen, so I stuck my head out into the world. A drizzle seeped out of the sky. I wondered if it was always grey here. I sort of liked it, because there weren’t any lies in it.

Down below were bicycles and canals and all manner of other offensive things.

There was the little park and the apricot tree where I had cut my arm a week ago, on the day we arrived. My body had still been clotted with sleep, but I ran up to it, dropping my suitcase in the grass. My eyes had clamored for good omens, searching for something lost. A long time ago, he and I had wanted a garden.

“Where we could feed each other fresh fruit. And lie naked,” he’d said.

I had climbed up the trunk, ignoring the scraping shards of bark. The apricots hung in fat clumps, and I took one between my thumb and forefinger. There was an obscene tautness to it, like smooth skin. It looked a little young, so I tested its flesh in my teeth. It wasn’t bitter. With my pockets full, we sat in the grass. Hours ago we had been in a dried-up place with the goodness slowly leaking out of us, almost gone. Now we had sweet water sticking to our hands and faces, and we looked around, waiting for our restoration. He palmed apricots absentmindedly, pulp running between his fingers, and I spat seeds onto the ground.

“Berlin,� Kate Erickson

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“Amsterdam” Kate Erickson

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Watermarked

My mother called it “God’s country,” as if He were a cloud spread only over Southern Delaware. Southern Delaware – gossiping fruit stands; fish-diving osprey on the Nanticoke River; nylon plants now closed; milk jugs bobbing in the bay, marking crab traps and silt-sunken sails.

Southern Delaware was underwater not long ago. And the dirt is sand, and the air is salt, and birds fly over seeking the sea, but the lush blue-green is just peach trees, so I bid them east to shore where they’ll find vinegar fries for dinner.

My mother was born here. My grandmother dies here. Tourists come with the drought.

The town Hardscrabble is near the town Little Heaven, named for baked roads and July handing you a ripened-red tomato.

- Nathalie Trepagnier

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Caroline Shen

Year: Sophomore Images created in the artist’s studio as part of her technical training.

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“Untitled”

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An Interview with

william f.

Gilly

William F. Gilly, a professor of biology at Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station, has an extensive research history: his work, conducted both in the lab and onboard research vessels, ranges from studies of neuronal biophysics to observations of Humboldt squid behavior. Every other spring, Gilly leaves Monterey for Baja in a refurbished fishing boat to lead a course called Holistic Biology.

There, he retraces a route taken in 1940 by the novelist John Steinbeck and his friend Ed Ricketts – one of the first holistic ecologists, and the model for the character of “Doc” in Cannery Row. The Log from the Sea of Cortez, an account of the trip coauthored by the pair, was a melding of Steinbeck’s aesthetics and Ricketts’s naturalist approach, and remains a seminal example of interdisciplinary thought.

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What was the idea behind the original Sea of Cortez expedition?

As they say themselves, on the surface it was justifiable as a traditional scientific mission with a set of specific aims. But in reality, they both wanted to leave behind some major distractions and personal crises in Monterey and to escape into the joy of exploring something entirely new – to see all that their eyes could accommodate, as they put it. They loved the word ALL.

What sorts of discoveries have resulted from your following in Steinbeck’s footsteps?

There are scientific ‘discoveries’ or new results, and there are personal realizations. The former are written up in peer-reviewed journals and lead to additional work by you or others. The latter can change the way you think about everything. Usually in retrospect, such things seem obvious, perhaps bordering on trivial. But sometimes they need to be freed from the unconscious before we ‘realize’ them.

For example, it was naïve to expect to go back to all the sites visited by Steinbeck and Ricketts more than 60 years later and be able to make sense of all that has changed — even if we could identify all that has changed. What really is necessary to see change is to examine something

on and on) are all extremely complex issues Of course they can – and any scientist that will never be understood (let alone that dismisses what the humanities have to ‘solved’) from a single perspective. We teach us is probably a charlatan. Faulkner’s need to not only bring collaborators from novella The Bear is a great story of both different disciplines together but to also personal and ecological awareness – the develop a fundamentally more holistic way two cannot be separated. These works of thinking by these show us the way of putting science into collaborators. How a humanistic perspective. And of course “It took leaving the path of Steinbeck and do you do this? By there is Moby Dick. Students of science Ricketts for us to find the sense of discovery reading the poetry should read these works not to be cultured, of Robinson Jeffers but to be human. that they must have experienced.” in conjunction with a geology class? Conversely, how has your scientific There are many ways, background, both as a neurobiAnother example that hit home during but bridging the gap between science and ologist and ecologist, affected your the trip was the realization that by following humanities is essential. own reading of Steinbeck? Are there the path of Steinbeck and Ricketts – visiting the same places at the same time of year, Why do you think it’s traditionally aspects of his work that you think etc. – that we were putting blinders on been easier for writers to poeticize are best appreciated with some bioour own eyes, and preventing them from logical knowledge? fieldwork than labwork? discovering what was really out there. This epiphany came after we were done with I suspect that Log from the Sea of Cortez Probably fieldwork is naturally more our intertidal work and had embarked on is more appreciated by those with a bit of appealing to most people, and it may lend a week of squid studies out of sight of the biological knowledge, but it is written in a itself more readily to an adventure-type shoreline. We were in the middle of the Gulf, way that does not demand it. It teaches you story. In some cases (including my own in a dense fog bank caused by an upwelling the biology as you go along with the voyage.

– electrophysiology), there is a difficult event, when we found the first tiny larvae Perhaps that is what really appeals to me, language problem that needs to be resolved. of Humboldt squid ever described in this because it also has defined the journey that But this is not impossible, even for fields area, thereby demonstrating that spawning was taking place. But this scientific finding (which we later published) did not resonate “Students of science should read these works like the realization that it took leaving the path of Steinbeck and Ricketts for us to find not to be cultured, but to be human.” the sense of discovery that they must have experienced. This is real discovery and it changes you. that are far removed from the backgrounds of most people. There are some extremely brought me to this interview. As an electrical Do you feel that the holistic, inter- compelling, beautiful, and philosophically engineering student going into physiology disciplinary approach that Ricketts deep tales of lab and theoretical work – in graduate school, I was scared. I had and Steinbeck took in The Log from Freeman Dyson’s Disturbing the Universe essentially no formal biological background other than ninth grade biology, which as the Sea of Cortez still has relevance and Steven Weinberg’s Dreams of a Final far as I can recall was entirely devoted to Theory come to mind. to today’s scientists? dissections. I had far more background in electronic instrumentation, but even Absolutely YES. Ricketts and Steinbeck Santiago Ramón y Cajal, godfa- that was more from a long-time interest both told us how everything in nature is ther of modern neurobiology, once in ham radio than courses in college. But connected to everything else, that man is part wrote that a major “disease of the biology, like any science, is about seeing the of nature, and that even the most familiar will” for scientists is bibliophilia, familiar, asking new questions, and finding things should be periodically examined and the desire to be “cultured.” Do unexpected answers. That is the primary from a variety of angles under a jeweler’s joy of discovery. Background is just that, loupe. The big issues in ecological sciences you think that the works of Stein- and it will grow on its own as you continue today involving climate change, health beck or other literary authors can the voyage. of the oceans, rising human populations, have a positive effect on the modern shortages of fresh water (and the list goes scientist? over and over again at close time intervals, so ongoing variation doesn’t obscure long-term change. The global warming controversy is teaching us this very well.

But sometimes you just need a more visceral example.

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“Pears,” Caroline Shen, Charcoal

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Home Life of Salinger It’s morning in New Hampshire, and she wakes up J.D. for his papers, toast and tea.

He starts with the local rag, the Union Leader.

What do you think about the gays getting married, Mr. S? There’s no answer until he finishes reading, he’s a careful reader.

I don’t really care, he says.

- Frank Rodriguez

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“Boy,” Caroline Shen, Digital

Interregnum of

skinsky CHARLIE MINTZ Skinsky in locked places.

Skinsky in hiding, but never caught.

Skinsky in feats of falling, feats of fighting, feats of risk.

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Skinsky in his backyard in June.

Skinsky in socks and shorts, aureolas flaring, squeaking across the grass to his trampoline and beginning a bounce. Skinsky working hard, curling his toes as he lands and gaining elevation.

Skinsky at the height of the low branches on the big tree and rising. Skinsky landing, rebounding and flinging himself up to the summit of his bounce. Skinsky with a Skinsky’s-eye view of everything: roofs, trees, his backyard and his audience in it. Skinsky in back flip. Skinsky in front flip. Skinsky announcing he has one last trick and then Skinsky in descent, unfurling, making an X of his body and colliding cheek first with the trampoline’s fabric slap.

Skinsky grunting one short syllable, “Ah!”, as he’s hurled up by the hiccup of springs. Skinsky bouncing to a standstill, dismounting and masking his face with both forearms. Skinsky on haunches in the shadows of friends as they crowd to see Skinsky in damage.

The crowd, from its depths, presses in, draping itself onto shoulders and backs. Skinsky whimpers but they ignore it. They bat aside his arm to touch him—his hands, his hair, the exposed parts of his neck. “Should I get some water?” someone says.

“One of our fathers?” “Want to sit? Want to lie down?” Skinsky stares through the slit in his forearms at their faces. Some, deep in their features, look pleased. He whimpers once more to check.

The friends nearest him frown and crunch their eyebrows. But

towards the back, on the faces of the draped ones, the pleased second, go shiny. Skinsky waves and his smile disappears. look seems only to float nearer to the surface of their features, “A concussion?” says a third. “I don’t know about that. Maybe.” like something held under water and then freed.

They watch Skinsky bait his dog with a tennis ball, the dog Seeing this, Skinsky snorts, snotting on his forearms. He starts barking rhythmically and pitiably from the ledge. He chucks the to guffaw. Then he stops guffawing to throw open the mask of ball deep into his backyard and dives under water again. He skims his arms. And there’s his face-freckled, smooth, blotchy pink but the bottom of the pool, his reflection rippling up. All around him, unscraped. “No worries,” he says. “I practiced that shit.” Up go the friends of Skinsky see shimmering swaths of blue—the color his shoulders, eyebrows and hands. Up goes his upper lip into a of his aura, according to one girl, whose own is a buttery yellow. smile.

Prompted, they can feel it too, Skinsky’s blue aura. It feels light His friends back away, stepping off the grass onto pebbly and misty, like dry ice. They have to wave their hands through it cement as Skinsky makes his appeasing motion. From where they to see him. are they hear a new sound, a low drone from near the pool. Also He comes up for air. “Two minutes, twenty-six seconds” he a churning sound, a filter maybe, and the sound of insects—only yells, over the lapping of water. “Swear to God.” He pulls himself a dozen or so of them, but suddenly everywhere, in everyone’s up onto the ledge and then kicks off backward, letting the force face. They swat and swat. They are parted suddenly by Skinsky of his words hit while he’s submerged. who runs through them to dive into the pool. He rises and begins From above, the silence of watching. Skinsky breast strokes taking laps back and forth across the water. back and forth across the bottom of the pool. He reminds one Slowly, the friends of Skinsky begin girl, who stores the comment, of a pale and frantic frog. Frogto applaud. They whistle. The Skinsky jerks his torso suddenly up and heads for the boy who, when Skinsky hit, surface. He breaches, and with him, out of the reverse “We believe you,” turned to his neighbor and splash, a long gasp of inhalation. He paddles furiously says one, after a long silence went “Oh snap!” notices to the ledge and grabs it. “Three minutes!” His voice filled with lapping. a wetness in his eyes and breaks, and he shouts again: “Three minutes. Swear shoulder-dabs it. A girl with on my grave. Swear on all our graves.”

“But do it again.” late braces claps until her hands “We believe you,” says one, after a long silence filled sting. with lapping. “But do it again.” Skinsky pinches his nose and They clap, because Skinsky never fails. plunges back under. He counts one Mississippi, two Mississippi, “Fucking A,” someone says, “Skinsky, my heart.” until he reaches one hundred and eighty Mississippi, but when he A girl holds her arms out in zombie posture. “Look at my surfaces to shout this, they are all gone. hands. I can’t steady my hands.”

July. Skinsky finds himself tanning in the sun for hours, Skinsky’s friends feign concern: chests clutched, sighs noisy sweating through different hats as he contemplates his burnish. and significant. They pretend that relief is the reason their arms At night he slathers aloe vera and sends e-mails. Mostly he is won’t stop trembling—a relief so heavy it makes them tired. That alone. momentary feeling of world-balancing, score-settling—that was Sometimes he is joined by friends, grouped in threes and sixes. meant for someone else. They shoosh their giddy blood.

They hang out by his pool, eating snacks and saying little. They Gluck Auditorium, the first day of eighth grade. The beginning. follow Skinsky into his house and in spasms of shivering browse Skinsky is up in the wires and hot lights while the principal paces his refrigerator. Some remember where the plates and cups and the hardwood. He speaks of metaphorical mountains, the need to silverware are kept; some need reminding. His father brings surmount them. Four hundred pairs of eyes roam upward to the lemonade and chips outside, silently wondering at the multitude hidden and burning Skinsky. Skinsky makes a name for himself of his son’s pack. this way. Ninth grade: Skinsky scaling the side of his house, After an hour, the pack will become bored, and Skinsky will ascending from door to window to balcony to gutter to satellite feel its attention on him, like a wet hand on his neck. The first dish, standing triumphantly among the signals. time this happens, he will grab a foam surfboard from his garage, Skinsky in locked places. Skinsky in hiding, but never caught. toss it onto the water and leap onto it. He will balance, perform a Skinsky in feats of falling, feats of fighting, feats of risk. Skinsky in handstand as it sinks and water floods up his nose. The next time feats of fucking, they had heard—sensational, unimaginable acts. he feels the silence he will go for the board again, but something Skinsky at fifteen, kicking off from the cliff, splashing between will stop him. He will go back to his chair and sit, his skin turning the reef and the rocks and swimming to shore with no injury red and painful. Eventually he is alone again for his afternoons but a seashell cut on his pinky toe, trickling red. At sixteen, the in the sun, which become afternoons in front of the TV, and his trampoline, a birthday present from all of them, and Skinsky in burned skin turns pale again. flight.

One night Skinsky’s friends invite him to a party. They tell A girl watches a dripping Skinsky cross the yard. She says, him to be ready at 9:30. At 9:00 they arrive. He is still in shorts “You think he’s concussed?” and a t-shirt soaked with sweat from push-ups, but they pull him “No,” says a boy. He watches Skinsky, and his eyes, for half a out anyway, tugging him down the stairs and out to the car, into

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which they squish, asses and laps and thighs all mashed together. rope ladder, but then he feels woozy and stumbles, the ground The driver puts in a CD and plays it loud. Skinsky feels a finger rushing up at him. A hand takes his shoulder, steadying him. drum on his hip, but he can’t tell who it belongs to.

Another, arriving after the point is moot, grabs his elbow. They They arrive at a wood, one-story house, with yellow blaring “Woaahh,” like he’s a horse that needs slowing. through the windows and bass rumbling the lawn. Skinsky has Someone says “I think we overshot it. Let’s put him away.” never been to this house before. When he comes through the front When Skinsky wakes up he’s on a couch. His face is stuck to the door he’s greeted by the lifted eyes of twenty or so familiar strangers. leather. When he pulls free he sees that it’s morning. Two boys he He readies himself to remember names. Tiny, all-colored bits of doesn’t recognize are drinking orange juice at a table behind him. tissue paper drip from the walls, adhered with still wet glue. For a “You’re Skinsky?” one says, wiping his lips. conversation starter, he considers asking if the party decorations “I’m me,” Skinsky says. are maliciously ruinous or merely accidentally so. When he finishes The boy makes a thumbs-up sign and then inverts it. eyeing the room Skinsky notices that his friends have disappeared.

“You,” he says, “are lame.”

There is the sound of laughter from behind a closed door.

Skinsky waits on the driveway for his father to pick him up.

He hears someone say, “I don’t know man, I “Friend’s forgot about you?” his father says. don’t know,” and then, “Alright, alright, Skinsky says nothing. His father changes the alright, alright. We’ll ask him.” topic to a movie neither of them has seen. Just He hears someone say, Skinsky dances. He feels people before they pull into the driveway, Skinsky “You know how a cat always watching him and tries not to decides to call it quits. let it affect his dancing. As he’s His presence, over the next week, dries lands on its feet?” dancing, his elbow knocks into up. He becomes scarce, a rare metal. something that feels like an arm He is seen at the drive-thru, covered in shirt. He opens his eyes. A girl driving off. He is misidentified Skinsky feels anxiety in pink flashes the most astoundingly white and at restaurants, at shoe stores— pulse in his stomach. symmetrical smile Skinsky has ever seen. He is paralyzed even in the mountains once, with indecision until the girl glides away and into another which turned out to be nothing room. Skinsky feels a red cup pressed into his hands. but the shadow of a deer eating some “This is blood,” a friend of Skinsky says, “You are a thirsty leaves. An alleged Skinsky at the movie theatre proves to be a vampire. Scratch that, the thirstiest.” thirteen-year-old, freakishly tall and hormone-addled, leaping Skinsky tries to bare his fangs. He drinks up. from seat to seat during a matinee. Skinsky is at no one’s house, “Skinsky, I bet you can’t drink all this alcohol,” another says, in no one’s backyard, in no one’s photographs. But the friends of waggling a red cup at him.

Skinsky have summer school, secret projects, brothers and sisters Skinsky bets he can. to care for. They have parents and occasionally grandparents to Soon the room is wobbly and Skinsky feels like a sickly vampire. appease.

A heart-shaped face calls out to him from across the room. He goes More weeks pass. It is still July—a hot, wide-open July they have to it. to squint at. The friends of Skinsky feel summer passing from them, “You’re familiar,” Skinsky says. Through the backdoor he can see over them, diverting around them like redirected water. Their lives, colored blotches, bodies in shiny, plastic coats. they notice, have become flat and risk-less. Their bodies, sensitive The girl smiles her astounding smile. “Want to come outside?” and underused. They investigate various ways of undoing this. They she says. Skinsky does. Suddenly he is cold, and he is pulling his are slightly less careful when crossing the street. They dream plans shorts down over his knees. He can hear voices but is unable to of visiting travel advisory countries. One night they all play the put a face to a voice. Indecipherable sentences pass back and forth fainting game. They awake, dizzy and elated, but the feeling fades. over his head. When his stomach feels partially settled, he tries They make a pilgrimage to the roll-over bump at the intersection looking around. Faces of his friends are intermingled with the faces across from the movie theatre. They are piled into two cars. One of the familiar strangers. Eyes dart to his and look away. Past the will go first and drive over the spot of pavement that triggers the clustering of fabric Skinsky sees a rope ladder dangling down from green light. The next will come hurtling down the street and hit the the roof. He follows it to where it’s tied to a rain gutter. Propped bump, go off the bump into the air. From this will come something or resting around the patio, other strange objects: a hula-hoop, ski definitive: a rope snap, the sudden sound of breaking free. They boots, a pellet gun, boxing gloves, juice boxes, band-aids. will feel, in their stomachs, the hard lump of anxiety dissolving into He hears someone say, “You know how a cat always lands on its liquid. They will exorcize the spirit of Skinsky. feet?”

But they flub it—the red light turning green before they expect Skinsky feels anxiety pulse in his stomach. and the lead driver making a sudden, confused right turn; the hind Someone says, “I feel like I have some idea, but I would like to car braking abruptly and careening up onto the sidewalk, where it see.” sits, panic lights blinking, as the friends of Skinsky unload.

“Call me...Catman,” says Skinsky. He takes a giant step to the “What the fuck was that?” says the driver of the lead car. “I

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“Schoolyard,” Jin Zhu

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trigger it. I trigger it.”

Skinsky’s mom clasps her hands and beams at him and he looks “Already triggered,” say two or three of the passengers. away.

“Where’s Skinsky?” says a boy nursing a bloody nose. “Where is “Do you guys want to stay for dinner?” says Skinsky. that guy?”

“Um,” he says.

He’s at home. They find him there. They knock on his front door “We shouldn’t,” say the rest. and are let in by his mother, who intuits their purpose and tells “Well, okay,” she says, over-agreeably. “Well me and this one here them that he is in the den, “doing his thing.” In walks one. In walks will just have to have it all for ourselves. And plus the mister of another. Some claim the lead. The leaders lead on into the den. He’s course. He’ll want some too.” She laughs intensely. She leaves. on the couch, watching TV. He has a blanket pulled up to his chin “We’re sorry if your mom heard any of that,” someone says. “By and he’s putting his lips out for a straw. the way.”

They stare at Skinsky, reduced, looking saturated, puffy, He stares at the cartoon. The battles rages. Pieces of the sword funneling kernels of popcorn into his mouth with one hand. He’s are everywhere, and hopes of reconstructing it look slim. Skinsky watching Japanese cartoons. The characters have spiky hair and turns on his side, touching his nose to the cushion. big, elliptical eyes filled nearly entirely with white. The subtitles are July. Endless July. Claustrophobia. in English. The story involves a mythical sword split into pieces and Undirected longings. Within a week six of the good and evil warriors in search of it. them are in Prague, staying with someone The foremost leader finds the illuminated power button and or other’s cousins. They send group shuts off the TV. He looks back to the group, suddenly unsure. e-mails littered with exclamation points.

Skinsky turns the TV back on with the remote. He slides his arm They return, listless. There is talk of jet back under the blanket. He draws the edge over his nose so just lag. Two enroll in a German philosophy his eyes peek out. class at the junior college and abandon “Are you depressed?” someone asks. themselves to unfathomable texts.

“I don’t think so,” he says, the sound Three fall sick with something, possibly The leaders muffled by knitted wool. mono. Another almost chokes to death “Are you sure?” on a fruit cup, and they stop hanging lead on into the den.

He pulls the blanket away to out with a group of four, whom they He’s on the couch, watching TV. sip his soda. “No,” he says. “No never liked to begin with.

I’m not sure.”

The group reels, recovers, finds He has a blanket pulled up to his chin There is a silence. itself on a peeling balcony one warm and he’s putting his lips out “You’re fine,” someone says, night. There is a moon halo, piercing for a straw. elongating the vowel in fine. the clouds. Several nod up at the sky “Skinsky,” someone else says, occasionally, reaffirming the existence of “Today we took the bump at seventy-five. the perfectly round light. Others talk, listen, or We took it. Have you ever seen anyone do remain silent, doing neither. One, who is usually silent, that?” tonight is talkative. Unsure where one goes once on a train of “No, never,” he says. “That’s idiotic. thought, he gets the idea to reminisce.

Did you really?”

“Oh, Skinsky,” he says. “Oh how we miss a Skinsky. Oh how we “No,” someone else miss a Skinsky missing a Skinsky. Oh how we miss. What says. “But nearly.” was best about him? Was it his grace? His balance? I think His mom appears in it was his grace. But others will say his balance. I’m the kitchen, parting the not sure it shall ever be settled. Did we take him for crowd to remove from the granted? Maybe. Did we abuse his trust? oven a tray of something Perhaps.” covered in thick, white He goes on like this. He finds sauce. The smell of garlic himself very far from his point. He fills the room and everyone decides to perform a feat. Then he is momentarily loses his or her on the railing, a killing distance above train of thought. the ground. The group turns to take His mom goes “Mmm, him in. They take turns, taking him doesn’t that smell amazing?” in. They say “What are you doing?” and the ones who know her and “Are you drunk?” and “Do you first name nod politely. She know how high that is?” bustles around the kitchen, Up on the railing, he looks for running water in the sink, lining some way to extend his quest. A tree up the silverware in the drawers, branch. A branch whose bristles he can sponging oven racks. barely see, bouncing in wind. This is a branch he “I wish I could stay for dinner,” one says. could reach. Would Skinsky come this far and

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quit? Hasn’t he seen him the very same way, knees flexed, center of with his hands. A few friends come forward and begin massaging gravity hovering out over the fall? He tries to interpret the outward his shoulders. He sits stiffly for a while, and then leans back into appearance of a Skinsky, and by this he hopes to draw inward the their grips. A girl comes forward and begins scratching his head actions that certain postures imply. with her nails. The others sit, or stand, staring out over the backyard.

He crouches, knees up by his face, arms straight out behind him “You’re the king,” they tell him. “The king of feats.” gripping the railing. He lets himself pull against the tension in his They wait until dark in his living room, and then they go out arms. He sights the tree branch. There is a silence that sounds like to the trampoline carrying flashlights. Skinsky had no idea he had waiting, and he leans out past the point of return, reaching for it. so many flashlights, so many D batteries. He sits on the lip August. They no longer talk, merely vocalize and wait. of the trampoline, untying his shoes. The flashlights Physically, they are in peak health. But all day they illuminate his hands, the laces, the spot of brood. At night they sleep like lions, dreaming ground a few feet away where he tosses his of elusive things. They talk only when moving keys. Some lights fragment off to hit distant “You’re the king,” between places of sitting or standing, on trips to trees, corners of darkness in his yard. But they tell him. the refrigerator or to retrieve an item, a bong, a soon they move in unison. board game, a toothbrush from someone’s car.

Skinsky begins to bounce.

“The king of feats.”

And even then, to no response. Their statements A girl in flower socks thinks it’s a little shrivel in the air and slough downward like dead sad, bringing Skinsky back to this. But then skin. she begins tracking him with her flashlight, the From nothing, one night, someone says, “What is it about that beam making him stand out big and only against the black. A boy phrase?” He studies the ceiling. “Why is it the first phrase I want shivering beneath two sweaters follows Skinsky with a flashlight to say?” heavy in his hand and begins matching his breaths to the squeak of Later another says, “I think it’s, you know, kitsch. It’s sap, it’s the trampoline.

Hollywood. We’re indulging ourselves. We’re getting fat and stupid Skinsky throws his arms into the air, urging up his height. He on this crap. I think we should get off this.” comes down, the flashlights follow, and he rises again.

“Death defying?” says the first, “Defying death? Is that the They watch him rapturously, lifting the faces of their flashlights phrase? Or is it just the alliteration? Death ignoring? Death to illuminate his body in concentric circles of dull yellow. His arms avoiding?” and shoulders are completely slack. His knees bend slightly as he Much, much later, as he is being dropped off at his house, a third hits and returns to the air. Some of them begin to jut their chins remarks, “This, this, this, this, this, is ending.” involuntarily as he lands in expectation of the leap.

They think of June. They think of school. They think of classes.

Skinsky at the summit of his bounce. Skinsky imagining the They think of tests. They think of secret beer. They think of swipe of lights across his chest and up and down his body as he hallucinated sunsets. They think of homeroom. A word, a smell, bounces. Skinsky looking out to the pool, measuring the jump, the arrangement of food on a plate will tug them involuntarily feeling himself hitting the water and sinking, the sudden chill of it. among distant moments. They need a Skinsky to return them to the Skinsky all smiles, falling through the air, landing and propelling present. Never are they more fully where they are than when their himself out. Skinsky sailing through the air, raising his legs in front hearts are out on a ledge with Skinsky. During sex, maybe. But no of him and urging his body out. Skinsky in the air crossing the other time. Not discussing the day’s events with family. Not alone, space above their heads, when the flashlights go off. scheming, or just sitting. Not with each other. Though sometimes, The friends of Skinsky hear a sound of soft against hard, and the in glimpses—no, still no. sound of pain following it, a wordless, guttural revving of the lower They visit Skinsky again. His mother watches them move throat. The revving opens up to a roar, a single sustained syllable through the house and into the backyard. Skinsky is sitting in a that crests and then breaks over them, and gathers strength again. plastic chair, drinking from a red cup. The friends of Skinsky It is the sound of Skinsky in pain and they grit their teeth against approach until they are arced around him in rows, like shark teeth. it. They stand in the near black, backlit blue by the hue of the pool, “What?” he says. staring at the fuzzy spot of night where Skinsky hit. It is impossible Behind him the fence separates his house from his neighbor’s. to make out anything but a faintly moving shape, a shape that could Skinsky looks over his shoulder, then back at his friends, be a trick of their eyes, and a sound of their own struggles up from instinctually looking for an escape route. Skinsky stands, chair legs within them. scraping, sending his dog hustling off.

Still making the sound, they grip the grips of their flashlights, “Forget if you think I’m doing any more tricks.” he says. “Forget thumbs probing the rubbery buckle of each on-button. There is a it. I’m not your trick guy.” click, and then another. And then, like a tiny city at dusk, the whole “But Skinsky,” they say. of them is illuminated from within. Their flashlights brighten a Skinsky shuts his eyes, holds them shut, and then opens them. span of air above them, casting weak light on the trunk of a lemon “What?” he says. tree some fifty feet back and the white tips of fence at the edge of A boy puts his hand on Skinsky’s shoulder. the property. They move their lights along the top of the fence, and “You are our guy,” he says. “You’re our guy.” then pull their massive spotlight down over wet blades of grass, Skinsky sits down in his chair. He puts his palms on his knees, towards the spot of cement where Skinsky fell. The light passes over leans forward, and begins drawing deep breaths. He rubs his face him, and he turns up his face to meet it.

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“Architecture�

22 Leland Quarterly Winter 2010 Derek Ouyang

bitch Half terrier, half greyhound, fished out of a pitbull’s throat at the pound, a shivering shaman—ordained to exorcize my ex-husband’s obesity and the new wife’s depression.

She was reserved. Never yapped.

Never dove for crumbs in the carpet.

Sat by her bowl at the appointed hour like a secretary by some damn bar fluent in the syntax of waiting.

Or so they tell me, as I sink into a new couch in their new den.

She’s not a real pet. Can’t possibly be.

She won’t run. She doesn’t fetch.

Bounds off the bed at his touch.

Honey, he calls her. Silence. See? What should we do?

He’s not losing weight.

She’s not much happier.

The couple excuse themselves to the kitchen, one after the other.

I turn to Honey by the wall, sitting unbearably straight, staring out the glass panel doors, beyond the childless swing, above the birch line— the black patch where a moon should be.

“Helene,” Jackie Basu, Pen

- Karmia Chan cao

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“Explosion in the Sky,” Derek Ouyang

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“Woods,” Jin Zhu

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“Bridge Series, 1900,” Caroline Shen, Charcoal

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Sheldon

JASLYN LAW

Fifteen years old—old enough to be pulled to the door by the cosmic tug of Friday nights, but too young and scared to be able to go out and do anything. Hong Kong is no city for boys who haven’t learned how to make bad decisions. If I wasn’t going out tonight—or any Friday in the foreseeable future—I could at least grab a jacket and leave home.

A monsoon was coming and I bent into the hot wind as trees bent away from it. Buses and taxis and chauffeured black cars whined and putted past, their lights coloring the water that pooled and stank wherever the pavement dipped. The top of my head lead my progress up the hill, so I didn’t see the woman crossing my path until she was on the ground, the contents of her handbag rolling down the sidewalk.

I tripped over my feet and my apologies as I scrambled to retrieve the fallen items, trying to avoid looking at her long legs.

“Shit, my brand new Prada,” the woman cursed. “I’ll never get the stains out.”

I offered her a hand up and saw her face clearly for the first time. “Is it—Auntie Angela?” I spoke in English: I knew it was Auntie Angela—Auntie Angela who had always insisted I speak

to her in English because that was the only language of any value, literally. She looked the same, even after eight years. My impressions of her had always been tinted by the red of her spiky hair, her dark eyeliner, her protruding collarbones. My mother coined her in an acerbic three-word explanation—“She’s a socialite.” I had never heard the word before, but when my mother said that—“She’s a socialite”—I knew exactly what it meant, and I knew we did not approve.

Auntie Angela staggered to her feet and swayed on her stilettos, grabbing my shoulder for support. I caught whiffs of cigarette smoke, perfume, and what could only be alcohol. “Is that Miriam’s boy back from Eton? John? Haven’t I always told you it makes me feel old when you call me Auntie?” she peered into my face.

“No—it’s Sheldon—it’s Patricia’s son.”

“Oh, my actual nephew. I suppose you have to call me Auntie.

And I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to see Patricia didn’t teach you any better than to run people over.”

I felt I’d betrayed my mother.

“I’m going to be sick,” she said, and she was, all over the sidewalk. I breathed through my mouth only and stared only at the

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apartment building before me. It stretched higher into the sky than “No—I mean… I know.” I felt a little bit sick myself and I any of the surrounding skyscrapers. couldn’t tear my eyes away from the little chunk of vomit clinging “As long as you’ve caught me in a situation of utter indignity, you to the imported silk, silk that had come from Thailand just to might as well help me up to my apartment. I live here.” impractically panel a passage to Auntie Angela’s bathroom. All I I had no idea how my classmates managed to get into clubs or knew about Bangkok I knew from my mother: it was dirty, there buy bottles of booze, much less were a lot of forward whores with venereal how to deal with people once diseases, and the looms there spun the most Hong Kong is no city for boys they’d consumed significant beautiful silk. quantities of alcohol. Even if “What do you know?” Her voice narrowed who haven’t learned how to Auntie Angela had been sober, I to a dangerous point; she held it, threatening, make bad decisions. would have had zero idea about between my ribs. “Tell me what you know.” how to deal with her. I hovered I knew my mother looking like she’d just a hand over her shoulder and held her oversized red handbag in stopped crying, and from behind walls my father’s sharp, “Patricia, my other. Together we stumbled into the building’s lobby in a can’t you just deal with the fact that she doesn’t care about you at caricature of a pas de deux. all? You know she only cares about clawing her way to the top.” I All ritzy apartment buildings place a uniformed concierge remembered the last time I saw Auntie Angela: it was eight years inside the front doors, ready to call a taxi for a tenant or eject ago and she took me to high noon tea at the Shangri-La as she suspicious looking persons. I prepared to explain my identity, but did every week. She didn’t get me a bag of chocolates from the the concierge didn’t flatter me with a second glance. He turned to waitresses she knew by name, but sat tapping her foot, ignoring me press the button for the lift. completely. I sat as still and as quietly as possible, waiting for her to Propped up against the elevator wall, Auntie Angela considered notice my goodness—or at least to notice me enough to launch into me. “Sheldon. God, what a truly terrible name. I told Patricia so, a monologue the importance of improving my English. She didn’t but she’s always had just the worst taste—names, clothes, men.” speak at all until my mother came to pick me up. She sprang to her The scent of alcohol mixed with expensive perfume was exotic and feet and pulled her away and whispered furiously with her before surprisingly light. I imagined it moving through the air like smoke clattering down the stairs, yanking a box of cigarettes out of her from the long cigarettes she always used to carry. handbag as she pushed through the doors. She left her umbrella.

I abhor my name. “It’s not too bad,” I said, my defensiveness “No—I don’t know anything—I just know it’s none of my surprising me. The elevator passed from the twelfth to the business—it has nothing to do with me.” fourteenth floor, propelling us to the thirty-third floor, into the “That’s right,” she said forcefully. “It’s everything to do with your urban canopy of Hong Kong, where all the city’s dramas unfold. mom and your dad and this dysfunctional, dysfuctional family.”

“How about Shel,” said Auntie Angela. “Shel. That’s a name that I thought my immediate family seemed pretty functional, on the you could work. Feminine enough to be unthreatening, but the whole. one-syllable nickname is always sexy. Sheldon, “Shel.” She sat crossI christen you Shel.” legged in the middle of I prepared to explain my identity, If I hadn’t roused any suspicion as an her expensive tile, in adolescent male accompanying an obviously her expensive clothes, but the concierge didn’t flatter me intoxicated tenant clad in stockings with garter looking like a ravaged with a second glance. straps, I didn’t have a hope of working the name movie star—still Shel. glamorous, despite the The elevator doors opened and we spilled onto the landing. vomit. Her gaze was clearer and steadier now. “A sweet kid, really.

“Don’t you dare touch the walls,” she warned, fumbling with the Don’t worry. Girls will start to like you soon. You have very serious keys. “They’re silk-paneled and water stains silk. I had Justin bring eyes. You have my father’s eyes; deep, intelligent eyes. I have those me all this silk from Bangkok.” eyes. Margaret does too. Patricia never did. You won’t tell Patricia I supposed vomit would stain silk as well and that I was implicitly you saw me.” not supposed to let her touch the silk walls either, but she staggered “Of course not.” She didn’t have to tell me. down the passage to the bathroom before me and left some on the “Good boy. And I suppose the thing to do now as the rich aunt second panel. is to hand you an obscene stack of money and send you on your “It’s been ages since I last saw you—I feel so old.” She threw herself way.” Her eyes focused on my face again. “But you look an awful before the toilet. I busied my eyes with the shadowed splendor of lot like Patricia, aside from the eyes, and I won’t give her anything, the apartment’s interior decorating and tried—unsuccessfully—to nothing at all.” plug my ears with the distant sound of traffic.

She played a rhythm on the toilet bowl with her fingernails.

“Eight years now, isn’t it?” She looked up from the toilet bowl.

“There’s—I think a spot—on the wall,” I said.

“It’s not that I have anything against you, Shel. Of course it’s not “I’ll have to repanel them. Ochre would be nice. I’ll have to tell you, not really.”

Justin.”

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“Well—goodbye, Auntie,” I said, hovering at the end of the hall.

“Goodbye, Shel,” she said from the floor.

The elevator dropped through storeys and storeys of blinking, flashing city. Shel. I christen you Shel. I passed the concierge, who didn’t bother to look up from his paperback. I thought I might like it if I were able to come back. I thought I’d like to learn more about Shel and my intelligent eyes and the girls who would like me and silk walls all the way from Bangkok. I thought I’d like to know what bad decisions people made on Friday nights, only I looked like my mother.

I wanted to go back eight years to the Shangri-La and pitch a tantrum.

Thirty-three floors up, the lights were on in just the one unit.

“Oh, it was no problem taking care of you.” My voice shrilled, high and sarcastic. “No thanks needed, really.” My friends would tell me I was acting like a girl if they could hear me, and anybody else would think I was insane if they saw me. I stuffed my balled fists back in my pockets for the walk home, hoping the occupants of the looming glass high-rises around me were looking up at the

ominous, moonlit cloud cover instead of down at the street.

“Where were you?” My mother asked this every time I walked in, automatically, tonelessly, without expectation—knowing full well I didn’t have the courage to make bad decisions.

I looked her in the eyes, noticed how they were not like mine, how they were flatter, how they were smaller, how common and bland they were. My hands were shaking with a strange energy; I trembled with it.

“Nowhere.” The belligerence of the word felt dangerous, powerful on my tongue.

My mother lowered her magazine and stared at me. “Shel—” How could she know, she couldn’t know, I was overexcited, it was only her stammer—“Sh—Sheldon. You do not speak to me in that tone. I don’t care where you were; you are grounded.”

As my voice rose in practiced incredulity, as it began complaining about the unfairness, as her voice and mine competed for volume, I grasped for comfort in the argument I knew she would win, in my mother assuring me—I was Sheldon, and I was grounded.

“Still Life,” Caroline Shen, Charcoal Leland Quarterly Winter 2010

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To Jack, I hear you lost your eye in The War, though that is like saying you lost your eye playing Scrabble or wrestling wild beasts in the Serengeti.

We, perched on wooden stools inside, licking foam from four dollar nonfat Chais, are far removed from any of “The Wars.”

It is easier for us to imagine you bent over a battlefield of cardboard scrutinizing letters.

So let’s say that you lost your eye playing Scrabble. It must have been one hell of a game. Having not yet surrendered to the advancing gray or abandoned your razor to rust, you would still not be handsome but perhaps stronger, your eyes secure and unremarkable.

You must have noticed, then, only sight — perfect, seemingly independent from the rods and cones, the lens and vitreous.

You would have scouted the board easily.

You would have picked sleep from the corners of your eyes to buy time. You would not have wondered if an eyeball squashes like a grape.

“Profile Study,” Caroline Shen, Graphite

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or Perhaps Ben, Who Sits Outside Lulu’s Cafe on Pacific Avenue, and Whose Real Name We Do Not Know.

I like you as a Scrabble player more than as a soldier. Besides, you look harmless enough, now, with your black coffee and croissant, an old novel, Conrad, resting open and stained, to your right.

Your opponent must have been petty, the kind of man who talks through his teeth.

Maybe he had a mustache that curled up at the ends like fishhooks that you wished would just once cut through his cheek.

You imagined he would get by without a tongue as you reached into the black bag, passing over squares.

You’d write soldier into oxen and caress a W like something illicit. Oxen would lead into grenade, soldier into nostril, nostril into swan.

I don’t know what weapon your opponent used, or what, provoked him — jealousy, blood lust, pride, some arrangement of events causing his blood to move faster, his ribs to constrict, his breath to catch — but I imagine he first threw the board onto your lap and that your left eye held on to the image of all those letters tossed up and frozen in the air as though hanging by an umbilical cord.

My question is this: How long before your left eye surrendered to the pull and became, simply, something other than itself — no longer your left eye but tissue, debris, shrapnel — and could you hear the optic nerve snap?

I hear you lost your eye in The War, but I hear other things too, like that you used to tell people their futures, your glass eye secretly a crystal ball, that you’re a poet and that you were once young and worked for the circus.

Between sips I imagine that young you and then the you, now, getting up from your corner table.

You would tuck Conrad into your jacket and ground yourself with your good eye, calculating the contour of the sidewalk while, in your glass eye, in the pocket at the edge of sight, you would catch letters sprouting wings or the road blooming into rhododendrons or the whole damn town exploding into triple word scores.

- Kendra Peterson

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“Hiding,” Derek Ouyang

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“Generation,” Derek Ouyang

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An Interview with Molly Antopol How did you decide to become a writer?

Molly Antopol is a Jones Lecturer in fiction. She received an M.F.A. from Columbia University, and her fiction and nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in One Story, American Short Fiction, The Mississippi Review Prize Stories of the Year, Nimrod’s Prize Stories of the Year, Esquire.com, on NPR’s This American Life, New York Public Radio and elsewhere.

She chats with Leland about her favorite writers, how to move past the first paragraph, and why she resists the myth of the starving artist.

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I don’t remember it being a conscious decision. I was always a big reader, and a really nerdy kid—I had all sorts of imaginary friends and my mom says on camping trips I’d sit in my tent all day and write myself into whatever book I was reading.

But I didn’t see writing as something I could actually do as a career—growing up, I didn’t know any writers and it felt to me like a pie-in-the-sky profession. I figured I’d sneak in time to write when I wasn’t working—when I was a kid I wanted to be a psychologist. It was in graduate school that I started trying to figure out a feasible way to make a life of it. The Stegner Fellowship has been more important to my fiction than anything else—it was the first time I felt comfortable calling myself a writer without using air quotes.

What literature has been important to you?

Grace Paley and James Baldwin have had, without a doubt, the biggest impact on me. When I started writing, I was really worried about seeming sappy or sentimental, so I wrote these very lean and tightly controlled stories, though it went against what came naturally to me. It was only when I read Paley and Baldwin that I saw how emotionally direct stories can be without seeming manipulative or corny. I get the feeling that every one of their stories is something they felt they needed to write, that they were more interested in being straightforward and honest than wowing the reader with their cleverness. They also write such character- and voice-driven stories while still giving us a grand sense of the larger events happening around them—the politics of their fiction extend so naturally from their characters that I never feel they’re forcing their opinions down my throat. Their stories can also be so angry, without ever resorting to meanness—they’re two of the most generous writers I’ve read. And they both write such gorgeous prose without ever being arty or flashy. I could go on and on. My other favorites are Knut Hamsun, Isaac Babel, Alice Munro,

Bernard Malamud, William Trevor, Vasilly Aksyonov, Leonard Michaels, Ivan Bunin, Edward P. Jones, Raymond Carver, Deborah Eisenberg, Mavis Gallant, Joan Didion, Nadine Gordimer, George Orwell, Chekhov and, like everybody else, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy—The Brothers Karamazov and Anna Karenina are probably the most important novels to me, along with American Pastoral and Housekeeping. I also like a lot of younger contemporary writers—Alek-

writers, and at lunch we all come out and eat together.

What issues do you struggle with in your own writing?

rie Moore especially—served as models for everything from how to start a scene to how to use white space. Lately I’ve been finding that I trust my own instincts when starting stories, and though I know that has a lot to do with writing consistently over the past few years, I think it has more to do with having studied those stories for so long.

And one of the amazing things about these writers is that when, for example, I teach Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” I still feel like the wind’s being knocked out of me every time I get to the moment where Robert puts his hand over the narrator’s and tells him to draw. I feel the same way when I teach Richard Ford’s “Communist”—I know I should see it coming, but it surprises me every time I get to the part where Glen Baxter shoots those geese.

I have a hard time with middles. Before I start a story I usually have the opening scene, or at least the first paragraph, worked out in my mind, and soon after comes the ending. But middles have to achieve so much—they need “I feel the same way when I teach to simultaneously Richard Ford’s “Communist” ­—I know sustain the tension I I should see it coming, but it surprises me set up in the opening scene while every time I get to the part where Glen raising the stakes, Baxter shoots those geese.” they need to be surprising and not make the reader feel Do you think it’s possible for an ausander Hemon, Charles D’Ambrosio, Susan like I’m dragging them directly toward an thor to truly extract her own history Choi, Chris Offutt, Sam Lipsyte and Dan ending I refuse to budge on, even when it’s and personality from the stories she Chaon, to name a few. And of course I was painfully obvious where the story is headlucky enough to study with some of the best ed. That’s something I’m always wrestling creates? writers around while here at Stanford: Eliz- with—I’m a stubborn writer and often fall abeth Tallent, John L’Heureux, and Tobias in love with my endings, and once I’m ac- That’s something I think about a lot. I’m almost finished with my story collection, Wolff. tively writing toward them, my stories can and half of the narrators are men and some lose steam or collapse altogether. I always How often do you write and what is tell my students to shoot through an entire of the stories are set abroad or in the past.

But no matter how different they are (and first draft before revising so they don’t beyour typical writing process? how different I tried to make them from come married to phrases they’ll have to cut each other), they all circle back to the same I write on all the days I don’t teach. I write once the piece is done, and of all the advice themes and are very obviously written by best in the mornings, before my day gets I give in the classroom, this is the hardest the same person. Grace Paley has this great cluttered or stressful. My new plan is to to take for myself. It just feels so demoralquote, not to write what you know but to turn off my phone and email—I’m horri- izing to wake up and turn bly addicted to the Internet and can begin on my computer and try by researching one small (yet seemingly so to make sense out of a pile “I never really got the starving artist necessary!) detail for a story and the next of rubble—I need at least thing - what’s so romantic about it if time I look up from my computer I realize one solidly written section I’ve just wasted three hours reading Gawk- to tinker with just to get in you don’t have any time to make art?” er, or that I’ve gotten into a bidding war on the mode of writing, even if eBay over vintage patio furniture, both of it doesn’t end up in the finwhich I did this week. ished piece. write what you don’t know about what you know. That’s what it feels like for me. I read I don’t have a special desk or a lucky pen How has your writing changed since a lot of nonfiction, and I love the feeling of or anything like that. If I can sit down and you began your career? trying to understand what it would have get something done, it doesn’t matter if I’m been like to live in another place or during dressed or still in my pajamas, or have my When I first started writing, I read the same a different time, or even to live here in the music on or off. Sometimes I write in my stories over and over, trying to understand present day, but as a man, or a person much apartment or in coffee shops nearby, and how they were put together. I didn’t know older than I am—I often find that I’m able I’m also part of the San Francisco Writers’ how to do anything, and certain writers— to access certain emotional truths about my Grotto, which is great—I share an office Denis Johnson, Raymond Carver and Lorown life by not exploring things head-on. I with a couple friends in a larger building of Leland Quarterly Winter 2010

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don’t have any stories about young female writers living in San Francisco and teaching at Stanford, but I do feel that my collection accurately captures what I cared about, questioned and obsessed over during the time in my life I was writing it.

What do you think a short story can achieve that other forms of writing cannot?

Some might say a story can have a more fully developed narrative arc than a poem—but what about Philip Levine, whose poems are so character- and narrative-based? Others might say that while short stories can be novelistic in scope, their brevity demands that every word count—but what about poetically compressed novelists like Christine Schutt and Carole Maso? And then there are longer stories that I admire precisely because of the way the writers work with dead time and slower, more idle moments—I liked Jhumpa Lahiri’s newest collection of longer stories (Unaccustomed Earth) even more than her first because they felt so lived-in; the unhurried pacing of the stories made the endings even more shocking and resonant for me.

What advice would you give to undergraduates who have studied creative writing, but don’t know how to carry that interest into life after college?

Move somewhere cheap where you have time not only to write but to read. After college I lived in expensive places (Bay Area, Tel Aviv, New York), and was always piling on job after job to pay rent— I wouldn’t use my computer to write, I’d use it to search Craigslist for jobs. Before the Stegner I was living in Brooklyn and working three, sometimes four, jobs at a time. I was barely writing at all, though it was what I wanted to do most. It was a fun time, but also unnecessarily anxious and frustrating. I never really got the starving artist thing— what’s so romantic about it if you don’t have any time to make art?

And once you’re in that cheap place, find other people who like to talk about books, and a few who are interested in swapping work. But be careful about choosing your readers, especially with new writing—I heard Philip Roth talk once and he said something that really stuck with me: never let anybody read your early drafts if they aren’t on your side.

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Kate Erickson Major: Art History Year: Sophomore Series is the result of a month-long solo backpacking trip across Northern Europe in December 2007.

“Vienna”

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“Brugge”

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“Vienna II”

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“Vienna IV” 40

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THE PROMENADE, marc chagall, 1918.

He watched her grow smaller, a lost balloon. He had heard that when balloons fall upon the ocean, whales eat them and die.

He imagined ripples breaking upon the water like fireworks.

He watched her until she disappeared, and wondered whether there were enough whales to save all the balloons that he had lost.

- Wyatt Hong

“Promenade,� Marc Chagall, 1988. Image courtesy artinthepicture.com

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“Life,” Sam Julian, Pen & Ink

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Contributors

JACKIE BASU is a junior from Palos Verdes, CA. Karmia Chan Cao is a junior from Urumqi, China KATE ERICKSON is a sophomore from Carlisle, MA Joy Henry is a senior from Inglis, FL Wyatt Hong is a sophomore from Seoul, Korea SAM JULIAN is a senior from San Diego, CA Jaslyn Law is a junior from San Rafael, CA Charlie Mintz is a senior from San Diego, CA DerEk Ouyang is a freshman from Arcadia, CA Kendra Peterson is a junior from Santa Cruz, CA Frank Rodriguez is a sophomore from Bronx, NY CAROLINE SHEN is a sophomore from Palo Alto, CA Nathalie Trepagnier is a junior from Limeport, PA JIN ZHU is a senior from Mission Viejo, CA

How can I submit to Leland?

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Leland publishes three times per year. We accept submissions on a rolling basis throughout the year.

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All submissions to Leland must be original, unpublished work.

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Leland accepts and encourages submissions in a wide range of disciplines, including fiction, poetry, art, creative nonfiction (e.g., memoir, campus culture, student life), reviews (books, movies, music) and political essays (fulllength investigative pieces).

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The editors of Leland are concerned first and foremost with the quality of expression exhibited in a work, and not in the genre of work itself. Our goal is to have quality content across a breadth of disciplines, so please do not be afraid to innovate in your submissions.

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There is no expectation in terms of length of essays, poems, or fiction. We request, however, that you send in no more than six poems at a time and a maximum of four longer pieces.

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Leland accepts submissions exclusively from current Stanford undergraduates.

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All submissions are judged anonymously by the editors.

Submissions can be sent to lelandquarterly@gmail.com with “Name, Genre” in the subject line.

Check out lelandquarterly.com for more details.

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Volume 4, Issue 2 Copyright Š 2010 by Leland Quarterly Stanford University lelandquarterly.com