the last book I ever read (The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, excerpt eight)

from The Testaments by Margaret Atwood:

While Grove was being reduced to a slurry by the Handmaids, Aunt Immortelle fainted, which was to be expected: she was always sensitive. I expect she will now blame herself in some way: however despicably he behaved, Grove was nevertheless cast in the role of her father.

Commander Judd switched off the television and sighed. “A pity,” he said. “He was a fine dentist.”

the last book I ever read (The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, excerpt seven)

from The Testaments by Margaret Atwood:

On the fifth day there were six women in brown among the shooters. There was also an uproar, as one of them, instead of aiming at the blindfolded ones, pivoted and shot one of the men in black uniforms. She was immediately bludgeoned to the ground and riddled with bullets. There was a collective gasp from the bleachers.

So, I thought. That’s one way out.

the last book I ever read (The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, excerpt six)

from The Testaments by Margaret Atwood:

To pass the time I berated myself. Stupid, stupid, stupid: I’d believed all that claptrap about life, liberty, democracy, and the rights of the individual I’d soaked up at law school. These were eternal verities and we would always defend them. I’d depended on that, as if on a magic charm.

You pride yourself on being a realist, I told myself, so face the facts. There’s been a coup, here in the United States, just as in times past in so many other countries. Any forced change of leadership is always followed by a move to crush the opposition. The opposition is led by the educated, so the educated are the first to be eliminated. You’re a judge, so you are the educated, like it or not. They won’t want you around.

the last book I ever read (The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, excerpt five)

from The Testaments by Margaret Atwood:

The prelude was minor: I needed to go to the dentist for my yearly checkup. The dentist was Becka’s father, and his name was Dr. Grove. He was the best dentist, said Vera: all the top Commanders and their families went to him. His office was in the Blessings of Health Building, which was for doctors and dentists. It had a picture of a smiling heart and a smiling tooth on the outside.

One of the Marthas always used to go with me to the doctor or the dentist and sit in the waiting room, as it was more proper that way, Tabitha used to say without explaining why, but Paula said the Guardian could just drive me there, since there was too much work to be done in the house considering the changes that had to be prepared for—by which she meant the baby—and it would be a waste of time to send a Martha.

the last book I ever read (The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, excerpt four)

from The Testaments by Margaret Atwood:

Then she smiled and said, "Agnes Jemima. How lovely," and patted me on the head as if I was five, and said it must be nice to have a new dress. I felt like biting her: was the new dress supposed to make up for my mother being dead? But it was better to hold my tongue than to show my true thoughts. I did not always succeed in that, but I succeeded on this occasion.

“Thank you,” I said. I pictured her kneeling on the floor in a pool of blood, trying to put a pair of trousers on a dead man. This put her in an awkward position in my mind, and made me feel better.

the last book I ever read (The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, excerpt three)

from The Testaments by Margaret Atwood:

I wanted to say I was sorry for having gone to the protest march, but then we were at the school and I hadn’t said it. I got out of the car silently; Melanie waited until I was at the entrance. I waved at her, and she waved back. I don’t know why I did that—I didn’t usually. I guess it was a sort of apology.

I don’t remember that school day much, because why would I? It was normal. Normal is like looking out a car window. Things pass by, this and that and this and that, without much significance. You don’t register such hours; they’re habitual, like brushing your teeth.

the last book I ever read (The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, excerpt two)

from The Testaments by Margaret Atwood:

Aunt Vidala said that best friends led to whispering and plotting and keeping secrets, and plotting and secrets led to disobedience to God, and disobedience led to rebellion, and girls who were rebellious because women who were rebellious, and a rebellious woman was even worse than a rebellious man because rebellious men became traitors, but rebellious women became adulteresses.

Then Becka spoke up in her mouse voice and asked, What is an adulteress? We girls were all surprised because Becka so seldom asked any questions. Her father was not a Commander like our fathers. He was only a dentist: the very best dentist, and our families all went to him, which was why Becka was allowed into our school. But it did mean other girls looked down on her and expected her to defer to them.

the last book I ever read (The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, excerpt one)

from The Testaments by Margaret Atwood:

I was happy to put the Handmaid away in the box because the real Handmaids made me nervous. We would pass them on our school outings, when we’d walk in a long double line with an Aunt at each end of it. The outings were to churches, or else to parks where we might play circle games or look at ducks in a pond. Later we would be allowed to go to Salvagings and Prayvaganzas in our white dresses and veils to see people being hanged or married, but we weren’t mature enough for that yet, said Aunt Estée.

There were swings in one of the parks, but because of our skirts, which might be blown up by the wind and then looked into, we were not to think of taking such a liberty as a swing. Only boys could taste that freedom; only they could sweep and soar; only they could be airborne.

I have still never been on a swing. It remains one of my wishes.

the last book I ever read (Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’s Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie, excerpt fourteen)

from Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’S Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie:

Warner Bros. offered R.E.M. an appropriately artist-friendly deal. The band would have complete artistic control over its output—not just over the music itself, but also the album artwork, videos, and selection of singles. As with the previous deal with I.R.S., the Warner agreement was for five albums, which R.E.M. would deliver to the label completed and ready to go.

None of this was particularly new for the band. They already enjoyed a similar degree of freedom with I.R.S. What was different was the far greater promotional capabilities (and budget) Warner Bros. could offer, as well as a guarantee that I.R.S. would not have been able to accommodate: R.E.M. would own their master recordings. This marked a break with industry tradition: typically, the record label owned an artist’s recordings as a kind of insurance for the label putting up all the money in the first place. Whatever might transpire down the road—a falling-out, a public meltdown, even the death of the artist—the label could potentially recoup at least some of its investment via long-term sales of the recorded work. Under the R.E.M./Warner deal, the band agreed only to lease its recordings to the label for a predetermined period of time. Thereafter the band could either re-up with Warners for another stretch or take its product elsewhere.

It would have been difficult for any artist to walk away from such a deal. Warner were required to release whatever R.E.M. gave them. And R.E.M. could decide how much, or how little, they wished to promote that work; they wouldn’t have to tour, do interviews, or make videos if they didn’t feel like it. And, at the end of the day, R.E.M. would own every note of music they produced while under contract to Warner Bros. These factors, plus the warm relationship that had developed between the band and Lenny Waronker, gave Warners the edge over I.R.S.

the last book I ever read (Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’s Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie, excerpt thirteen)

from Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’S Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie:

The new Mrs. Buck moved into her husband’s quasi mansion just outside of downtown: a large, turreted house with a long wraparound porch that Billy Holmes refers to as “the Ghost and Mr. Chicken house,” due to its resemblance to the haunted mansion in the Don Knotts film of that name (it was more popularly known as “Buck Manor”). Perhaps in an effort to complete the gothic vibe, Buck purchased a hearse from a local funeral home, which passersby would often see parked in the driveway.

All these years later, Barrie is no longer married to Peter Buck, but she still lives in the house. She owns and manages the 40 Watt, as she has done since the late ‘80s—first in partnership with Jared Bailey and later on her own. Her ex-husband still plays at the Watt from time to time. The current whereabouts of the hearse are unknown.

the last book I ever read (Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’s Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie, excerpt twelve)

from Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’S Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie:

The interior of Jeff Walls’s house is tricked out in early-‘60s retro-futurist chic: lots of white, curvy plastic, squiggly glass, and white shag carpets, incongruously set against brick and wood-paneled walls. It is a house entirely befitting the lead guitarist of the Woggles, Athens’ premier garage-soul rave-up combo. Walls himself is an imposing presence: stocky, broad-shouldered, decked out in a tan jacket and a cap bearing the socialist red star. His hair is jet black, an indication of either excellent genes or a ready supply of hair dye. If it went gray, he would look a bit like Southern author William Styron, with his full cheeks and round nose. He leads me from one wroom to another, shuffling along with a certain lumbering grace. We arrive finally at a den overstuffed with guitars and books on all manner of pop-culture detritus: a Robert Mitchum biography, a critical study of film noir, biographies of various ‘60s icons (the Who, the Beatles, etc.). Walls motions me to a seat, produces a bag of weed and a pipe, and asks, “Do you smoke?”

This sort of question always puts me in a quandary. I’m not overly fond of pot, but I’ve learned that it can be a good icebreaker in interviews. So I say, “When it’s offered to me.”

the last book I ever read (Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’s Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie, excerpt eleven)

from Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’S Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie:

Stipe had more of a love/hate relationship with the road. He clearly didn’t mind it –after all, he’d elected to spend a significant amount of time in 1986 performing with the Golden Palominos—but there seemed to be a big difference between the low-pressure situation of chipping in with a pre-existing collective and fronting his own band. With R.E.M., it usually took him a few shows to regain his “loud shy” performing persona, and the transition phase could sometimes be awkward. At the band’s first show of the Pageantry tour, at Oak Mountain Amphitheatre in Pelham, Alabama, Stipe told the crowd, “If anybody’s read the back of the T-shirts that are up there, this is our first show, and we haven’t played in a bit of time, since, um . . . “—Berry broke this pause with an impatient tapping of his cymbal—“ . . . seems like about a hundred and fifty years. The, um . . . “—another pause—“I’ll tell you later.” Stipe had become adept at accentuating his awkwardness for humorous effect, but it was nevertheless clear that this was an off night for him. Later in the show he commented, “Everything’s kind of falling apart up here,” and, still later, “We’re hoping by next week that we’ll be able to keep the time between songs down to under five minutes . . . “—more impatient drum taps from Berry—“This is our showcase song for the evening, featuring the inimitable . . . Bill Berry!” Stipe gave an embarassed laugh; the song in question, “Superman,” featured lead vocals by a different member of the band. “I mean Mike Mills!” he yelled over Buck’s guitar intro.

the last book I ever read (Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’s Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie, excerpt ten)

from Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’S Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie:

By mid-1986, it’s quite likely that Peter Buck was itching to get back on the road. In the short span of time he’d been home, he had been forced to deal not only with the end of his relationship with Ann but also with the death of his father, with whom he’d had a somewhat problematic relationship, at least when it came to discussions of his career. Whereas the parents of Stipe and Mills had been tremendously supportive of R.E.M. from the beginning, Buck’s parents had not hidden their disappointment at their son’s chose occupation. Buck’s father ultimately came around to a kind of bemused pride at R.E.M.’s success, but the way he chose to express this to his son proved hurtful. “We weren’t really close in a lot of ways,” Buck later told an interviewer. “The last thing he said to me before he died was, ‘Make sure you make a million, because there’s nothing else on earth that you are able to do.’ He was trying to kind of say ‘Stick with it,’ but he was saying it in the nastiest possible way.”

the last book I ever read (Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’s Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie, excerpt nine)

from Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’S Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie:

Beyond the Harris stories and the surfeit of local inspiration, Stipe was also fixated on the novels and travel writings of British author Lawrence Durrell during this period. A protégé of Henry Miller (author of Tropic of Cancer and other acclaimed/controversial novels), Durrell was cut from the same cloth as many of Stipe’s other heroes; like Patti Smith, John Barth, Man Ray, Lou Reed, and Lillian Hellman, Durrell was a freethinker who challenged prevailing social norms in both his life and his work—particularly those related to religion and sexuality. But what Durrell also brought to the table—and what undoubtedly influenced Stipe—was his strong affinity for place (in Durrell’s case, the Mediterranean and Egypt), his impressive vocabulary, and his lyrical, somewhat ostentatious deployment of that vocabulary in the service of his muse. In an interview a few years later, after the bloom was apparently off the rose, Stipe seemed to rue his fixation with this author. “Oh my God,” he said. “He’s so sappy and thick, I’m embarrassed. Lawrence Durrell. Before I traveled to Greece. His prose was so thick and tactile, no country could live up to that.” But during 1985 Stipe cited Durrell frequently. In an August 1985 television interview in Toronto, Stipe claimed that he had read “everything” by the author. The fact that he made a routine of publicly name-checking Durrell, much as he had done with Patti Smith a couple of years earlier, may be seen as some indication of the depth of Durrell’s influence on the songwriter.

the last book I ever read (Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’s Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie, excerpt eight)

from Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’S Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie:

Lyrically, there was nothing on Murmur to pin it to Athens, to Georgia, or even to the South. Musically the story was much the same, apart from some half-assed yodeling on “Shaking Through” and a vague Southern twang here and there. It would seem, then, that the band’s celebrated sense of place, at least on this first album, was largely achieved via smoke and mirrors. Yet the intent was there. In a 2013 interview with Salon, Peter Buck explained the band’s subtle approach: “Art isn’t something that happens in New York or Paris, it happens everywhere. And if it’s good, you can represent where you’re from, to a certain degree. That’s a little bit of what R.E.M. was trying to do. We didn’t say we’re super Southern, but I think we gave a sense of place.”

Something of the place does come through on Murmur, even if it is somehow buried between the actual notes. Later R.E.M. albums would reference Athens and the South more explicitly, but it seems to me that the one-two punch of Chronic Town and Murmur captures the spirit of the town the best—perhaps because the band members were still spending most of their time there. The delicately picked guitar patterns, nasal vocals, and lyrics steeped in mystery seem to suggest a self-contained world willed into existence by its inhabitants. When I first heard Murmur, a good four years after its release, these qualities called out like a siren song; they played a larger role in my decision to attend the University of Georgia than I was willing to admit at the time. I had a vision of an eccentric small town somewhere off in the murky woods, a place where a community had fallen under the spell of art for art’s sake and students and scenesters alike flocked to clubs in droves to pogo-dance to quirky, angular art rock. Astonishingly, the place I found largely matched the place I had imagined (probably the only time in my life that has happened). Now, it’s quite possible that the Athens I envisioned—this mecca of free-spirited creative enterprise—didn’t actually exist when Murmur appeared in 1983. The scene that has been described to me was certainly a vibrant one, but it was also more underground than what I found when I arrived in Athens a decade later. It follows, then, that what I found had, at least in part, been created by Murmur. “As above, so below,” the Hermetic expression goes. Begin with the idea, the myth, then watch it manifest itself in reality.

the last book I ever read (Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’s Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie, excerpt seven)

from Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’S Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie:

Murmur was recorded during January and February 1983, often in two- to three-day bursts bookended by shows in Athens and Charlotte and one lone gig in Davidson, North Carolina. R.E.M. played the shows with their usual full-bore power, then went into the studio to recast the same material in rather quieter tones. In this, they were surely influenced by Easter’s view that albums should be self-sufficient works or art and not simply approximations on wax of a band’s live sound. The addition of Don Dixon’s expertise and discipline ensured that Murmur took a step forward sonically and melodically while maintaining the sense of experimentation and adventure that had distinguished Chronic Town. For the justifiably nervous Jay Boberg, whose reputation was on the line, the end result proved the best of all possible worlds: a seriously catchy album with fathomless depths.

the last book I ever read (Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’s Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie, excerpt six)

from Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’S Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie:

Jefferson Holt is one of the most problematic figures in R.E.M.’s history—problematic because the band members and their remaining management did their best to erase him from the R.E.M. story following their acrimonious split with him in 1996. They have been surprisingly successful in scrubbing his association with the band from the Internet, though there’s nothing to be done about the various pre-1996 R.E.M. books and articles in which Holt features prominently. As of this writing, he appears directly in just one clip on YouTube, as a participant in a 1988 video feed that went out to employees of Warner Bros. Record—the band’s then-new label. In that clip, Holt comes across as a combination of Michael Stipe and the actor James Spader. Like Stipe, he is thin and somewhat gangly and conveys a sort of quirky charm mixed with an air of slumming Southern aristocracy. With Spader he shares an owlish face that seems to be constantly suppressing a smirk, along with a sharp dress sense and an ever-present pair of spectacles. His Southern accent is of the lilting, genteel type.

the last book I ever read (Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’s Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie, excerpt five)

from Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’S Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie:

Pat had recently become a vegetarian—not an easy lifestyle to maintain in the deep South in 1980. But Athens boasted one vegetarian restaurant, the Bluebird Café, which was also heavily frequented by aspiring veggie Michael Stipe. One morning, Pat was standing outside the restaurant talking with Bob Hay of the band the Corks (soon to be renamed the Squalls) when he noticed “this kid with orange hair.” Stipe introduced himself and invited Pat over to R.E.M.’s new practice space on Jackson Street to hear them play. Somehow, it seems, he never mentioned the name of his band. The two walked the several blocks over to the space and fell into an easy rapport. Despite their differences in age and personality, they’d had similar upbringings: Pat had also been a military brat and had lived in Germany, France, Texas, Montana, and Alabama, while his family on his mother’s side had roots in Georgia going back several generations. This common background did not emerge completely during that first conversation, but it no doubt informed a shared language and worldview that enabled Pat to hit it off more easily with Stipe than most people would manage to do.

The two arrived at the practice space to find a note from Peter taped to the door. Bill and Mike had to go back to work, so there would be no practice today. However, a couple of girls were hanging around, waiting for Michael to show up; one of them also sported orange hair. They went inside and Michael promptly sat down at a Farfisa organ set up in the corner and started banging away like some eccentric composer played by Vincent Price in a Hammer horror film. The girls watched, entranced.

the last book I ever read (Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’s Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie, excerpt four)

from Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’S Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie:

One particular incident remains embedded in Kathleen’s mind. During a seemingly aimless car ride through north Georgia farmland, the two spotted a man on a tractor working his fields. That was when Bill confided to Kathleen that his ultimate ambition was not to be a rock musician but rather to own a farm and be a farmer. The parked their car and walked over to the guy on the tractor, and somehow Bill talked the man into letting him take a spin on the machine. They spent the better part of the afternoon riding the tractor over the man’s fields, and Bill was about the happiest Kathleen had ever seen him.

the last book I ever read (Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’s Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie, excerpt three)

from Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’S Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie:

There are a number of people out there who believe to this day that Pylon was the greatest band ever to come out of Athens. Millions of R.E.M. fans would dismiss this statement outright, yet it deserves serious examination. Certainly, Pylon was unique among the first wave of Athens bands. Virtually every aspect of their sound—from the minimalist, trancelike groove laid down by Lachowski and Crowe, to Bewley’s jagged, atonal guitar textures, to Briscoe’s yelps and guttural grunts—was unlike anything the Athens party crowd had heard before. And only in the Athens art community could such a pointedly anti-mainstream ensemble have become that community’s “resident dance party band” (Brown’s description). But there it was. Something in that locked-down rhythm section and those stuttering guitars got people moving, jerking their bodies across living-room floors.

Much of Pylon’s genius can be attributed to the fact that the band was built from scratch by people with no preconceived notions about what they were doing. Lachowski and Bewley had begun writing songs together almost immediately after purchasing their instruments (at a yard sale and a pawn shop, respectively). Crowe had been playing drums for less than a year. Briscoe had apparently sung in her high school chorus, but you wouldn’t know it; seemingly unschooled in the rudiments of rhythm and intonation, she created her own alternative parameters. Pylon were cluelessly overconfident art students coming at rock ‘n’ roll from the outside. They rebuilt it in their own image and lo, it was great.

the last book I ever read (Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’s Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie, excerpt two)

from Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’S Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie:

The combination of such “outside the box” marketing techniques with Ian’s many cost-cutting measures enabled Squeeze to turn a decent profit at the conclusion of the tour. Perhaps even more significantly for posterity, Copeland had single-handedly cobbled together a club circuit that could be utilized and adapted by subsequent under-the-radar bands. Ian himself reused this template when booking the first American tour for his brother Stewart’s band, the Police, in October-November 1978. This was an even more audacious endeavor, given that the band had decided to tour prior to the release of their debut album. But the Police’s incendiary live performances created a word-of-mouth buzz that preceded them wherever they went. Bill Berry was on hand throughout the planning and execution of this tour and, perhaps unknown to Ian, absorbed all its details and lessons.

Bill put in only two years at Paragon, though he might have remained in Macon had it not been for an eventful phone call between Mike Mills and his father in the fall of 1978, during which the elder Mills berated his son for squandering his excellent SAT score by hanging around Macon and working at Sears. This prompted Mike to talk with Bill about pulling up stakes and enrolling at the University of Georgia together. Bill didn’t need much of a push; he continued to nurse dreams of working on the management side of the entertainment industry, or as an agent or manager for professional athletes. In either case, he would need some type of higher degree, and MBA perhaps. His departure from Paragon turned out to be well time; the company, along with Capricorn Records, collapsed into bankruptcy shortly thereafter.

the last book I ever read (Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’s Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie, excerpt one)

from Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’S Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie:

It’s a toss-up as to which of the following factors was more transformative in the lives of Mike Mills and Bill Berry: their newfound friendship with the well-connected Ian Copeland or the record collection he had brought with him. It’s probably not true that Ian single-handedly introduced the city of Macon to punk rock, but he does seem to have been the first person to turn Bill and Mike on to the new sound, exposing them to such bands as the Damned, the Ramones, the Dead Boys, Chelsea, and the Sex Pistols. Mills credits this adrenaline shot of raw rock ‘n’ roll with inspiring in him a renewed interest in playing. “We would play along to the Ramones’ first record,” he recalled later. “And the first Police single, which was ‘Fall Out’ and ‘Nothing Achieving’: That was huge. That was the sort of stuff that got us playing again.”

Bill and Mike were essentially hearing this stuff in a vacuum. Outside of Ian’s apartment, there was no punk subculture in Macon. There were no clubs where the music could be heard live. And any fashion aesthetic had to be gleaned solely from the album covers. Thus they missed out on much of UK punk’s Cultural Revolution-style emphasis on demolishing the past and rebuilding from scratch. They either missed or disregarded the Clash’s declaration of “No Elvis, Beatles, or the Rolling Stones in 1977!” For these two, the lean, hard-charging sound of this first wave of punk was simply an exciting new chapter in the ongoing narrative of popular music. Mike still loved Harry Nilsson and Bill still loved Motown. Punk for them functioned as a renewal rather than any kind of ground zero.

the last book I ever read (What You Have Heard Is True by Carolyn Forché, excerpt fourteen)

from What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance by Carolyn Forché:

A few weeks later we were told that twenty-seven federal agents had surrounded the apartment where Alex was staying in Los Angeles, had apprehended him, and summarily deported him to the custody of the Salvadoran government, whereupon he was immediately imprisoned. Some years later, Sean would tell me that he didn’t remember the man called Alex, who had once stayed with us, but had always wondered how he had learned to play chess.

the last book I ever read (What You Have Heard Is True by Carolyn Forché, excerpt thirteen)

from What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance by Carolyn Forché:

Early every morning Harry played a Nicaraguan revolutionary song on his cassette machine to rouse us to work, followed by serious Latin music or jazz. I told him my stories too, and he understood them. He had met Leonel in El Salvador on several occasions, he said, and thought well of him, but was also aware of the rumors regarding his possible affiliations, about which he “couldn’t care less,” except that he didn’t want me to be involved any longer in such dangerous activities, even though he himself, of course, would continue to work as a war photographer. He bought a coffeepot for me and I taught him to drink coffee, surprised that he hadn’t yet developed the habit. We shared a fondness for cigarettes. His refrigerator was filled with bricks of film, cigarettes, and Chuckles candy. I began to stock it with food. He figured out how to get the burners on the stove to work. Every night we went on the roof. Sometimes he cried out in his sleep (he said I did too), and several times called out to Olivier. I wrote during the day, attempting to produce a text that would please them, but one of the other editors thought I wrote too much about the campesinos and not enough about the war. Harry defended me. He was restless and couldn’t seem to sit still long, so he ran a lot of errands. By that time, I’d been traveling around the country for a while and was thin and jittery. Harry thought I should get off the road, but understood why that wasn’t possible. I saw his El Salvador through his photographs. He saw mine through my poems.

the last book I ever read (What You Have Heard Is True by Carolyn Forché, excerpt twelve)

from What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance by Carolyn Forché:

Alfredo drove slowly, so close to the avocado trees that their branches brushed the roof. Just before pulling into the street we saw them, three men, hunched over a taxicab that was idling with its doors open, three men whose automatic weapons were aimed at our windshield. They wore black masks. Alfredo does not remember that part. He is already grinding the gears into reverse, whipping the car sideways against the wall, and calling me to get out and run back to the casita. I hear voices shouting underwater, the slamming of car doors, a long squeal of tires. Water silences the world. I’m running through the avocado trees, losing first one shoe and then the other, tree to tree until I reach the casita and push through the unlocked door. I didn’t know where Alfredo was or what I would do if he didn’t return. I didn’t know if anyone was behind me among the trees, or whether the taxi in the road had been the vehicle to squeal away. In dreams to come, the windshield is shattered over and over in a spray of light, but now I’m in the casita and out of breath, wildly searching for a place to hide where there was none.

It was only minutes that I was alone before Alfredo arrived, ghost faced and leaning back against the door to close it behind him.

“Death squad,” he whispered, catching his breath.

the last book I ever read (What You Have Heard Is True by Carolyn Forché, excerpt eleven)

from What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance by Carolyn Forché:

“The Americans did something about twenty years ago,” he said over the wind. “There was malaria, and they sent crop dusters to spray for mosquitoes. The malaria disappeared for a long time. After that, they wanted to clean up the country because there was so much dysentery. This is because the poor have no place but the fields to relieve themselves, as you have seen. They sent several thousand latrines they called portable toilets. Johnny on the Spot. They were blue plastic, with doors and ventilation, and it was explained to the campesinos how to use the chemicals to get rid of the waste. The campesinos live in houses made of mud and cardboard. One man said to me, ‘How can we live in a cardboard box and shit in a plastic house?’ So what do you think? They took apart the latrines and used the materials to make better houses. Even now, today, walking in the countryside, you will find the blue toilet seats scattered around.”

All of this was shouted as we drove with a jeep’s canvas roof rolled back.

the last book I ever read (What You Have Heard Is True by Carolyn Forché, excerpt ten)

from What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance by Carolyn Forché:

The lieutenant colonel kept his desk clean, but in the ashtray there were several twisted paper clips. I noticed that one of the drawers in the file cabinet wasn’t quite closed, and it crossed my mind to go leafing through the manila folders that I could see plainly from my chair. The second hand clicked audibly. There was no wife, there were no children; the only photograph in the room was the portrait of the president of the republic wearing a dark business suit and a blue-and-white sash such as beauty contestants wear. Somehow this reminded me of Leonel’s story of the Miss Universe pageant held here just two years earlier. “So much poverty,” Leonel had said, “and this is what the government spends money on, this is what they’re interested in, a goddamn beauty contest. Well, the people protested as of course they would. They even occupied the cathedral for a week, and when the protest march was fired upon by security forces, as marches here always are, thirty-seven people lost their lives. They say fifteen, but they are wrong. It was thirty-seven. Most of the dead were students. The president of the republic called them Communists, of course, and charged them with plotting to overthrow the government. All because of Miss Universe.”

the last book I ever read (What You Have Heard Is True by Carolyn Forché, excerpt nine)

from What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance by Carolyn Forché:

The harvest was coming to an end, so everyone was off in the coffee. The bicycle-powered water drum idled in the shade, with the metal backpacks arranged in a row beside it. There was a whining sound in the metal swing-set frame that held the drum as the wind passed through it.

“I have some things to take care of here, so why don’t you write for a while,” he said almost gently, “write some poetry.”

Write some poetry, I whispered to myself when he had left. Just like that, I thought, pick up the pen and open the notebook to a blank page.

the last book I ever read (What You Have Heard Is True by Carolyn Forché, excerpt eight)

from What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance by Carolyn Forché:

All that day we went place together—to the empty gray cathedral without pews, flocks of dover flying in the clerestory; to the human rights office, with its red-and-gray-tiled floor, folding chairs and blue walls, where she showed me photograph albums, one with daisies on the cover, where the photos of the desaparecidos were mounted on sticky pages covered with plastic. Most of the photographs of the desaparecidos had been taken at school or on some occasions, such as completion of nurses’ training, a quinceañera birthday party, a dinner in celebration of a betrothal. Therefore, most of the photographs were of young people, even if, at the time they disappeared, some were no longer so young.