the last book I ever read (A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler, excerpt eleven)

from A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan:

By this time, Jimmy was moving slowly toward a manic period. Although he was still in “denial” about the Porters having asked him to leave, and there was no open reference to it in his letters or poems, his anxiety found outlet in increased activity. For the time being this energy was channeled constructively into poetry. Unable to sleep one winter night in Southampton, he picked up a facsimile edition of Whitman’s original Leaves of Grass. He started reading the poem, hoping it would help put him to sleep, but “of course it was the wrong hour to do it because it is an incredibly stimulating work,” he recalled. Obviously, he had read Whitman before this, but confronted anew with “Song of Myself,” it came as a fresh revelation. Within a few days he was inspired to try to write something “like it,” and he began “The Crystal Lithium.”

the last book I ever read (A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler, excerpt ten)

from A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan:

C, which Berrigan began as a way to publish his and his friends’ work, was one of the earliest “mimeo” magazines, assembled of mimeographed sheets stapled together, a quick, unfussy form of publishing that would become a hallmark of the growing activity around the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York’s East Village. Most of the magazine’s run of thirteen regular issues (ending in 1966), plus two special issues of C Comics, had cover art or illustrations by Brainard, lending the publication a distinctive visual identity. The magazine’s involvement with the earlier generation of the New York School began with issue number 4, which included a large selection of Edwin Denby’s poems. It was Denby who advocated for publishing Schuyler in C, whetting Berrigan’s interest with a group of unpublished early poems and prose works. After “The Infant Jesus of Prague” appeared in 1963, Berrigan asked permission to publish Schuyler’s story “The Home Book,” as well as some of the poems Edwin had shown him. Jimmy agreed, and they appeared in February 1964, along with Unpacking the Black Trunk, a short play he had written in collaboration with Kenward Elmslie.

the last book I ever read (A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler, excerpt nine)

from A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan:

“Jimmy came for the weekend and stayed eleven years.” By the early 1970s, when Schuyler had been living with the Porter family for about a decade, this was Anne Porter’s well-worn reply to puzzled acquaintances who, observing the unusual situation, would hesitantly ask, “Is Mr. Schuyler a relative of yours?” Delivered in a voice no louder than a whisper, her answer was nonetheless pointed and, in a manner typical of the woman Jimmy once called “the wittiest person I know,” deflected into wry humor a situation that started casually and warmly, but would gradually turn awkward, then painful, then traumatic over the course of those eleven or twelve years.

the last book I ever read (A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler, excerpt eight)

from A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan:

Frank O’Hara came out for one memorable weekend, and a group decided to drive out to Coney Island for the day. Jimmy was scared and miserable on the famous roller coaster there, but Frank, typically, was exhilarated by it. Driving back, Frank was still somewhat punch-drunk from the park and sped up as he came into the driveway, pretending he was about to run into Fizdale and several others standing there, but stopped just in time. Fizdale and Gold were frightened and angry at this recklessness, and Jimmy assumed that this would be the last time Frank would be invited out to Snedens Landing. On the contrary. At breakfast the next morning, Fizdale sidled up to Schuyler and said, “I very much like your friend, Frank O’Hara!” Later that day, when Jimmy walked into Fizdale’s bathroom, he was surprised to find Bobby and Frank in the tub, happily taking a bath together. For the rest of the summer, to Jimmy’s great delight, Arthur Weinstein was off the scene and O’Hara and Fizdale enjoyed what would turn out to be a summer romance. There was a witty symmetry to the arrangement, noted with amusement at the time: the two poet-roommates having simultaneous affairs with the two duo-piano partners. The tandem love affairs had the incidental effect of bringing Jimmy and Frank closer together, emphasizing a sort of brotherly feeling that they seemed to have shared, particularly around this time.

Frank was an excellent pianist himself, having studied piano and composition in college. When the pair of professionals were not at their instruments, he often played for long periods. Fizdale was astonished one day to hear from the other room “some Rachmaninoff or Liszt piece being dashed off at the piano” and assumed that Gold was playing, only to come in to find that it was Frank, who he hadn’t even realized could play. This summer was the period of Frank’s life when he came closest to reconnecting with his early musical interests, and it shows in some of the references to musical forms, and to piano music in particular, in poems he wrote at the time. Living with the pianists had an influence on Jimmy’s work as well, giving him not just a greater familiarity with the literature of the piano, seen in later poems such as “Hoboken,” “Scriabin,” “Grand Duo,” and others, but also an insider’s view into the workaday practice of pianists, particularly the intimate collaboration, almost amounting to mindreading, required of duo pianists—insights somewhat applicable to his ongoing collaboration with John Ashbery on A Nest of Ninnies.

the last book I ever read (A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler, excerpt seven)

from A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan:

On December 1, a night train brought them across France and through the Alps, and they woke to find themselves in Italy. When Bill and Jimmy emerged from Santa Maria Novella station in Florence, they discovered the center of the Renaissance city largely in ruins. Three years previously, on the night of August 3, 1944, hoping to slow the advance of American and British armies, the Germans blew up five of the city’s six bridges, sparing only the Ponte Vecchio. They compensated for that omission by dynamiting all the streets leading up to the bridge on either side of the river. In 1947, most of this damage had yet to be repaired, although temporary Bailey bridges had been erected in place of the Ponte Santa Trinità and the Ponte alla Carraia.

Despite the ruinous state of the city, and the exhaustion of the people after war and hardship, preceded by years of Fascist rule, there was a mood of optimism in the air. “Early post-war Italy was glorious,” wrote the novelist Sybille Bedford. “One embraced the people for whom the springs of life were flowing again; they were at one with the staggering beauty of what there was to see, everywhere, dawdling in the sun, the sweet air, the new near quiet. Petrol was scarce, the Vespas and rattling trams were joyful toys, their noise another attribute of being alive.”

the last book I ever read (A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler, excerpt six)

from A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan:

During the nine-or ten-day crossing, Jimmy went on deck and watched the water churning in the ship’s wake, feeling the sense of occasion. His ambition, which he hoped to realize in Italy, was to write fiction—short stories and a novel. He had no thoughts yet of writing poetry. Meanwhile, his change in name held tremendous significance, and not only because “It’s good to / have your own name,” as he later deadpanned in “A few days.” By resuming the name he had been born with, he transformed with a single stroke his unhappy high school years, aimless college years, and the trauma and disgrace of his navy expulsion, into a life lived by another person.

Bill’s self-transformation had begun with his entering Columbia in 1944, graduating in 1947. While in Europe, he was planning to conduct research for two separate books: one on the theory and tactics of guerrilla warfare, the other a general history of Spain and the Mediterranean. Although Auden doubted Bill’s ability to see either of his book projects through, telling him, “You’re never going to write that book,” he helped with practical suggestions and contacts, giving him the name of a Professor Passonatti of Yale, who suggested he work in Florence and gave him a list of possible contacts there. Following this advice, the pair settled on Florence as their destination, but they would stop in Amsterdam and Paris on the way.

the last book I ever read (A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler, excerpt five)

from A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan:

The idea of leaving New York and going to live in Italy began to take shape in the summer of 1947, when Jimmy learned that the farm he had inherited ten years previously was finally able to be sold. It brought $6,000, with Jimmy keeping $ 4,000, and his mother, for some reason, getting the remaining $2,000. What better use for the windfall than going off to Europe, where living was cheap and they could “goof off and be somewhere beautiful,” as Jimmy later claimed, for as long as the money held out? Also, more seriously, there Jimmy could pursue his writing and Bill conduct research for the history of Spain he hoped to write.

When they went to apply for passports in June, both Bill and Jimmy had issues in determining what names to use. Bill’s old passport for Spain had used his birth name, William Aalstrom. However, his new one was issued in the name Aalto, which had become his legal name when his mother’s husband Otto Aalto adopted him as a boy. Jimmy, on the other hand, found, or claimed, that his name had never in fact been legally changed to Ridenour when his mother married Berton. Whether or not this was true, he submitted only his birth certificate to the State Department, giving his name as James Schuyler, taking this opportunity to cast off his stepfather’s name. It felt like a rebirth.

the last book I ever read (A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler, excerpt four)

from A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan:

Jimmy was sent to the temporary U.S. Navy prison, or brig, on Hart Island. The 101-acre Hart Island, situated in Long Island Sound a few miles north and east of Manhattan, has a checkered history. At the end of the Civil War, it was briefly a federal prison camp for Confederate soldiers. In 1868, it was purchased by the City of New York for use as a potter’s field, which it still is, with burials there carried out by prisoners from neighboring Rikers Island. At different times in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it also housed a tuberculosis hospital, an insane asylum, a boys’ reformatory, a women’s prison, a drug abuse center, a shoe factory, and a Cold War intercontinental missile base.

During World War II, the greater New York City area was a busy navy harbor, teeming with thousands of sailors on shore leave in the city. Disciplinary problems were inevitable, and beginning in April 1943, and until to the end of the war, a portion of Hart Island was requisitioned by the navy as a disciplinary barracks. During its wartime use as a prison camp, the island held about sixty buildings of various kinds, including a mess hall, heating plant, firehouse, butcher, commissary, laundry, garbage disposal plant, hospital, visitors’ house, theater, officers’ quarters, kennels, and two churches. Remnants of many of these buildings stand today as crumbling brick ruins, overgrown with foliage.

the last book I ever read (A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler, excerpt three)

from A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan:

Schuyler credited Smeltzer with opening “windows for me on / flowering fields and bays where the water greenly danced, / Knifed into waves by wind: the day he disclosed William Carlos / Williams to us, writing a short and seemingly / Senseless poem on the blackboard.” Smeltzer also piqued Jimmy’s interest with a mention of James Joyce’s Ulysses. However, when Jimmy asked after class for more information about Ulysses, which had been banned in this country as obscene until 1933, Smeltzer chuckled and said, “When you’re in college it will be time enough.” Annoyed by Smeltzer’s coy hypocrisy, Jimmy went to Buffalo and, as he related in “The Morning of the Poem,” bought a copy of the book from Otto Ulrich’s bookshop, where John Bernard Myers, later a prominent figure in the New York art and poetry world, then worked as a salesclerk. Jimmy recalled him as a “big white whale” who loomed over him one day as he was reading in a corner of the shop, and said “You look like an interesting boy,” and gave him a copy of his magazine, Upstate. Jimmy’s rumored possession of Ulysses lent him unwonted status in the eyes of the high school jocks, normally oblivious to his very existence. He managed to get the book into the house, past his suspicious stepfather, by telling Berton it was a socially conscious book “about poor people in Ireland.”

Despite Smeltzer’s introducing him to William Carlos Williams’s poetry, Jimmy did not read him in earnest until he was in college, when he especially loved the “complete freedom” in his work. Through anthologies he also discovered Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay, D. H. Lawrence, and other modernist poets. Lawrence and Stevens had probably the most impact, and over the next few years he came to feel he had memorized Harmonium and The Man with the Blue Guitar and Ideas of Order.

the last book I ever read (A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler, excerpt two)

from A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan:

For a boy of fifteen living in suburban upstate New York, Jimmy’s reading was both worldly and idiosyncratic. Wilde, Saki, Maugham, Nicholson, Green, Logan Pearsall Smith—in fact, with the possible exception of Evelyn Waugh, all of the male prose writers he and Oshei mention reading in high school were gay. The queer slant of Jimmy’s early reading did not escape his mother’s sophisticated eyes. When, at an unknown age, Jimmy informed Margaret that he was gay, her response was “Just because you like Oscar Wilde, it doesn’t mean you have to do all those things.” Most of his favorite writers were English and wrote with a careful attention to their prose style, which tended to be clear and elegant, if sometimes mannered. Once Jimmy had decided to be a writer (of prose), he consciously modeled his prose on that of his heroes, and his heroes’ heroes. For example, he said, “I was very affected by reading Somerset Maugham’s Summing Up in my teens. In that book he describes how he really tried to learn by copying out long passages of Dryden’s prose. I did the same thing, only I chose Walter de la Mare and Cardinal Newman.” He also traced his habit of stitching together sentences with colons, often in evidence in his long poems of the 1970s, to his high school reading of Harold Nicholson’s Some People.

One afternoon when he was about fifteen or sixteen years old, while lying in his backyard tent and reading Logan Pearsall Smith’s memoir Unforgotten Years, Jimmy experienced a life-changing epiphany. In the first part of the twentieth century, Smith was a well-known literary figure, famous for a book of rather precious short prose sketches called Trivia. Unforgotten Years, published in 1939, tells how when Smith was a young man growing up outside Philadelphia in the early 1880s, he and his family became friends with the aged Walt Whitman, who used to travel from his home in Camden, New Jersey, to stay with them, and how through his friendship with Whitman, the youthful Smith became aware of his own vocation as a writer. While reading this in his backyard tent, as Jimmy later recalled, “I looked up and the whole landscape shimmered, and I said, ‘Yes, that’s it.’” In that moment, he realized that, “rather than an architect, I wanted to be a writer and would be one.”

the last book I ever read (A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler, excerpt one)

from A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan:

The name Schuyler (pronounced “SKY-ler”) is of Dutch origin. The Schuyler family were early seventeenth-century settlers of New Netherland, and prominent in New York State before, during, and after the Revolutionary War, lending their name to a number of localities and geographical features. New York State alone has a town of Schuyler, a Schuyler County, Schuyler Lake, and Schuylerville, and there are other Schuyler place-names in the Midwest.

The history of the Schuylers in America begins with two brothers, Philip (1628–1683) and David Pieterse Schuyler (1636–1690), who immigrated from the Netherlands sometime before 1650. After landing in New Amsterdam, they both moved up the Hudson River, became fur traders, and helped establish the city of Albany. By the mid-eighteenth century, the descendants of both Schuyler brothers were wealthy landowners who in some cases exercised almost feudal manorial rights over their extensive properties. The famous General Philip Schuyler (1733–1804), the Revolutionary War hero and member of the Constitutional Congress and one of New York State’s first senators, was a descendant of the older brother, Philip. His daughters, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton and Angelica Schuyler Church, were celebrated for their beauty, wit, and style. Elizabeth married Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the Treasury, while Angelica married a member of the British Parliament and was close to Franklin, Jefferson, and Lafayette. These historic family associations stirred James Schuyler’s imagination, especially during his difficult adolescence, despite the fact that (as he may or may not have realized) he was descended not from Philip but his younger brother.

the last book I ever read (Olga Ravn's The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century, excerpt thirteen)

from The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken:

STATEMENT 153

Yesterday I saw Cadet 21, a humanoid, standing on her own among the objects in the recreation room. Her eyes were closed. I watched her for a long time. A human being contemplating its creation. She stood quite still, in deep concentration. Eventually, she opened her eyes and looked at me, and her eyes were full of tears. I got the strong feeling that we have failed, and that our time is over.

the last book I ever read (Olga Ravn's The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century, excerpt twelve)

from The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken:

STATEMENT 138

I dream that I’m cooking my dress. I won’t be wearing my uniform today. The dress is covered with blue and silver sequins, and I drop it into a saucepan. By the time I remember it, it’s already burnt. The sequins have turned into fish eggs the size of peppercorns. Some of the eggs are black and shiny, others are the color of egg white, and transparent. The straps of the dress are thin and insubstantial, like warm glue. The dress can no longer be word, but it’s become an item of great beauty. You inform me that together with a handful of selected human employees I have now been tasked with dismantling the humanoid section of the crew via the mainframe in the engine room. I have no hesitation in taking on such a task. It shouldn’t be any problem. The dress in my dream carried with it the knowledge that my former sweetheart on Earth now has three children and has lost his hair, and that he has started wearing a yellow uniform jacket. And that I am here.

the last book I ever read (Olga Ravn's The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century, excerpt eleven)

from The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken:

STATEMENT 099

I heard Dr. Lund made one exactly like a child. But apparently its development went wrong, it killed a lot of chickens and smeared the blood all over its face. No, it does sound a bit exaggerated. I haven’t seen blood in a long time. What I do see are the white walls, the orange floors and the gray floors. I see my coworkers, and I see my keyboard, my joystick and my helmet. Through the outlet, I see the green earth I’ve never known. There are pilots who go out there, and they’re laughing as they exit. How they’ve got the courage is beyond me. It’s not because of orders that they do it. I think they do it just so they can be on their own. I mean, they’re not finding any more objects out there. I’m that humanoid child too, with the chicken blood on its face. I feel ashamed and sit quietly at my controls. Some of us are made to connect with each other, others with no one. If you look at things in the right perspective, all of us here on the Six Thousand Ship are Dr. Lund’s children. Why am I telling you this? I thought it might interest you that they go out there on their own.

the last book I ever read (Olga Ravn's The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century, excerpt ten)

from The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken:

STATEMENT 089

Sometimes the humanoids are very quiet. They’ve started sitting at the same tables together in the canteen. They sit in a row and take in their nourishment. It’s as if without a word being said between them they’ve somehow agreed to be silent. Only a fool should believe that silence is consent. Their keeping quiet seems more like a conspiracy than a willingness to serve. Yes, that’s correct, I’m nervous about it.

the last book I ever read (Olga Ravn's The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century, excerpt nine)

from The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken:

STATEMENT 068

Why should I work with someone I don’t like? What good could possibly come from socializing with them? Why have you made them so human to look at? I completely forget sometimes that they’re not like us. Standing in line in the canteen I sometimes suddenly realize that I feel a kind of tenderness for Cadet 14. She’s a redhead. Or maybe you developed them like that intentionally, so that we’d feel this sympathy for their bodies and the beings they are, if you can call them that, and make working with them easier. Yes. Only now you want me to, you want to change the nature of my assignment? So what you’re asking me to do is supervise Cadet 14’s movements about the ship, without her cottoning on? Because we share a bunk room together. Is it because she won’t talk to you? I’m not very comfortable with it, obviously. What you’re asking me to do is the same as surveillance, isn’t it? I don’t like her, but I still think about her all the time. So in that sense I suppose I’m the right person for the job. I try to understand her, who she is. She’s not just an embodiment of the program. There’s more to her than that. Is that the kind of thing you want? In the report? Whether she speaks to any of the other humanoids, and what they say to her? All right, I’ll keep an eye out. How I’d characterize her? Cadet 14 is humanoid, fifth generation, female, a well-liked employee. Does her work impeccably. A rather meek and docile version, like many of the fifth generation. She’s fond of the freckles on her nose. She looks at herself in the mirror in the bunk room before going to bed, and puts her finger to her freckles. How human, she says. To think they gave me freckles. What more could someone like me wish for? I think I love her. I need to work that out of my system, obviously. No, you don’t have to transfer her to another bunk, I’ve already told you, I’ll keep an eye on her for you. Isn’t that it? Isn’t that what you want? If I’m to be perfectly honest, if that’s where we’re at, I can say she’s a much better worker than me, we all know it’s the truth. What have I got left other than a few recollections of a lost earth? I live in the past. I don’t know what I’m doing on this ship. I carry out my work with complete apathy, sometimes even contempt. I’m not saying this to provoke you. Perhaps it’s more of a cry for help. I know we won’t get away from here in my lifetime. Cadet 14 hasn’t got a lifetime, or rather hers spans such a gigantic stretch of time it’s beyond my comprehension. She’s got a future ahead of her. So now you’re saying my job’s changed? That now I’m to watch her? I think this might save my life.

the last book I ever read (Olga Ravn's The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century, excerpt eight)

from The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken:

STATEMENT 057

One of the objects, I’d say it was about the size of a small dog, is shiny like a maggot from a different world, but also like a talisman I used to wear on a chain around my neck when I was a child and would put in my mouth and suck. Whenever I see it there in the room I feel the same urge to put it in my mouth, though it’s far too big for me to be able to do so. Still, I want to be in contact with it through my mouth, to understand it with my mouth. Loving it like loving a body part detached from the body. Not mutilated, just a part, detached and alive, an adornment. In me, the object is at once as small as the egg of a titmouse and as big as the room, or bigger, like a museum building or a monument. A secure and pleasant vessel, carrying inside a disaster retold.

the last book I ever read (Olga Ravn's The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century, excerpt seven)

from The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken:

STATEMENT 054

After I lost my add-on in the accident, I’ve started seeing it everywhere, it’s like it’s stalking me. It pulls at my clothing and sometimes I feel I’ve got to pick it up, cuddle and kiss it. Other times, when it appears there between the benches, half digital animal, half child hologram, like the ones allocated to some of the crew members who’ve lost their biological children, I scream with fright and yell at it, and maybe I’ll jump to my feet as well and give the add-on a slap in the face to make it go away. No one else can see it except me. I’d like to accept your offer of medication.

the last book I ever read (Olga Ravn's The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century, excerpt six)

from The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken:

STATEMENT 042

My work here is mainly of an administrative nature. Yes, that’s correct. I allocate the day’s tasks. It’s also my responsibility to make sure the human section of the crew don’t buckle under to nostalgia and become catatonic. We saw a lot of that to begin with. To everyone’s surprise, the objects in the rooms have been shown to alleviate the discomfort of these nostalgia attacks, and the human employees whose functions allow them to get out into the valley on New Discovery quickly show signs of improvement and lifted spirits. My own favorite is the big one with the deep yellow grooves. When the sun hits the object, the grooves glow and a resinlike substance oozes from them. Since there are no windows in the room where we keep them, we sometimes bring this object up into the panorama room. When our orbit around New Discovery brings us into the right position, the sun strikes the panorama room, filling it with warm and shimmering light, like luminous water. The big object then radiates from its place in the middle of the room. The fragrant liquid flows from every groove. Anyone present in the room at this point will be filled with a happiness I can’t describe in words. When the ship continues its course and exits the light of the star, the big object emits a sigh, as if fatigued. We wipe it clean with moist cloths and carry it back to its room. It appears fatigued in our arms. I’ve granted the crew permission to keep these cloths, which I know they like to place over their faces when going to sleep. I lie with one myself in the same way, and it helps me, even if I can’t explain how.

the last book I ever read (Olga Ravn's The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century, excerpt five)

from The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken:

STATEMENT 037

I could never understand why my father would use the word phenomenological incorrectly. But I didn’t have the heart to correct him. We were eating lunch. It might not be interesting to you. He said: “Humans will always have need of three things: food, transport, and funerals.” And so I became a funeral director, and now it’s my job to dispose of terminated workers and, in a few instances, bodies left over after sickness or reuploading. We’ve developed our own little ritual here, given that cremation is the only option and the bereaved have nowhere to go. Or perhaps bereaved isn’t the right word. I don’t know if you grieve over a coworker, but we perform the ritual anyway, out of respect, and you can’t exactly rule out relations occurring between members of the crew. But maybe that’s not what you’re here to investigate? I’m almost invisible to the others. No one wants to talk to me. Of course, there are quite a number of the crew who aren’t ever going to die, and I wouldn’t hazard a guess at how it affects them psychologically. If you can even talk about psychology in such cases. But maybe that’s what you’re here to investigate? At any rate, psychology or no, there’s still the physical matter to be taken care of, and that’s my job. I don’t find it unpleasant or repugnant. I’ve got nothing against death. Nothing against rotting away. What frightens me is what doesn’t die and never changes form. That’s why I’m proud of being a human, and I carry the certainty of my future death with honor. It’s what sets me apart from certain others here. But what is it you want me to talk about? The first thing I did when I came here was to get rid of my dialect. The next thing I did was to make sure the incinerator and the ventilation systems were working properly. I can report that they were, and very efficiently too. Sadly, I don’t get to use the incinerator as often as I’d like. There aren’t that many of us, to be honest. You want to know why I like the incinerator? It’s the smell of burnt matter, it reminds me of mealtimes at home. The smell of meat and soil and blood. It smells of the birth of my daughter. It smells of planet Earth. It’s not that I’m not happy here. My job here means everything to me. I was the best in my year, that’s why I’m here today. My father’s been dead for years now. I’m not sure why he came to mind. He belongs to another world.

the last book I ever read (Olga Ravn's The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century, excerpt four)

from The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken:

STATEMENT 033

I put on my yellow headgear. Once I’m wearing it, the person I am recedes into the background and I become the first officer. I throw the golden ball high into the air and catch it when it falls. I’m 10 years old, I’m 34 years old, I’m 50 years old. I pass through the corridor in my suit, the fragrance showers down on me, and I am cleansed. When I enter the room containing the objects, I am, in every respect, the ship’s pilot, every remnant of the private person is gone. I am the first officer. I pass from object to object and greet them in turn. I’m in no hurry. When the ritual is completed, I’m ready to begin the passage. I fly most of the routes, but since I’m not always able to wear the yellow headgear, others have been first officer too, and have performed the ritual in the same way. As long as you’re in the suit and pass through the corridor to be cleansed, you’re the first officer. All of us who have performed the ritual share that status; each of us is there, in a way, whenever the headgear is held up to be worn, whenever, after cleansing, one of us enters the room containing the objects and greets them in turn. As representatives we have to be as one. Otherwise the objects won’t recognize us.

the last book I ever read (Olga Ravn's The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century, excerpt three)

from The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken:

STATEMENT 026

The fragrance in the room has will and intention. It’s the smell of something old and decomposing, something musty. It’s as if the smell wishes to initiate the same process in me: that I become a branch to break off, rot, and be gone.

the last book I ever read (Olga Ravn's The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century, excerpt two)

from The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken:

STATEMENT 027

My research has led me to the conclusion that the best way of establishing contact with the objects is through smell. So I chew bay leaves when I’m in there with them. I’ve made several scientific advances by means of this technique, which has encouraged several of the objects to respond to my approaches by emitting a smell in return. Each object has a distinctive, and dare I say, personal smell at its center, and the object guards it the way a hand might clutch a pearl.

the last book I ever read (Olga Ravn's The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century, excerpt one)

from The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken:

STATEMENT 011

The fragrance in the room has four hearts. None of these hearts is human, and that’s why I’m drawn toward them. At the base of this fragrance is soil and oakmoss, incense, and the smell of an insect captured in amber. A brown scent. Pungent and abiding. It can remain on the skin, in the nostrils, for up to a week. I know the smell of oakmoss, because you’ve planted it inside me, just as you’ve planted the idea that I should love one man only, be loyal to one man only, and that I should allow myself to be courted. All of us here are condemned to a dream of romantic love, even though no one I know loves in that way, or lives that kind of a life. Yet these are the dreams you’ve given us. I know the smell of oakmoss, but I don’t know what it feels like to the touch. Still, my hand bears the faint perception of me standing at the edge of a wood and staring out at the sea as my palm smooths this moss on the trunk of the oak. Tell me, did you plant this perception in me? Is it a part of the program? Or did the image come up from inside me, of its own accord?

the last book I ever read (Chasing Bright Medusas: A Life of Willa Cather, excerpt ten)

from Chasing Bright Medusas: A Life of Willa Cather by Benjamin Taylor:

Her health declined further. Severe tendonitis was forcing her to wear an immobilizing brace on her right hand and arm. Writing had become all but impossible, and dictation of serious work was always out of the question. She’d written to Carrie Miner Sherwood, her childhood friend: “Of course I can’t dictate my own work—I have to see the picture shape itself on the page before me—the sound of my own voice would make me self-conscious. But I dictate all my letters, even those to old and dear friends.” Willa was in decline and knew it; she’d come to see life as a series of unbearable goodbyes, and lived clinched against the next devastating blow. In the Line-a-Day she kept sporadically at this time, “very tired” and “deathly tired” are typical entries. Additional strain resulted from her determination to dictate responses to the soldiers and sailors who’d read her books in the special Armed Forces Editions and written to thank her. While she was inclined in these years to say no to most everything—no to all requests to adapt books for stage or screen or radio, no to Viking’s proposal of a Portable Cather, no to all interviews—she felt an obligation to the men at arms she heard from almost daily and made it a priority to dictate responses to them.

On the other hand, her response to a Professor Carl J. Weber of Colby College was blunt. She begged for no more queries about her sources, meetings, inspirations, and creative process. “After all,” she tersely wrote, “this is not a case for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” She concluded the letter with a preposterous lie, and slammed the door: “I am leaving for Mexico City within a few days, and this is an opportune time to bring our correspondence to a close.” Whenever Willa wished to fend someone off, she would say she was going to Mexico City, a place she never in her life visited.