All day long Polina sat anxiously waiting in her neighbors’ apartment, with its cracked windowpanes and boiling sausages, filled wall to wall with beds, piles of clothing, and damp water buckets sweating into towels.
“Surrounded,” by Zhanna Slor Read More »
My very first memory is about being alone. I’m one or two years old, and I’ve just woken up from a nap. It’s pitch black, and I’m standing in a creaky wooden crib, holding the bars, looking out into the small, windowless room of our apartment on Kobylanskaya Street.
“The End of Whispering,” by Zhanna Slor Read More »
“I feel like most stories are really two stories. In putting those two together, I found the echoes between them. This one is very discernibly two stories. And it means a lot more as the last story of the collection, because then you see that this old Hungarian couple are echoes of my own grandparents, and that this survivor’s guilt the characters feel has a lot to do with mine. Even the little museum that Jed constructs has references to other stories in the collection. Not so overtly that it would be cheesy, but I want the sense that what he’s doing with that museum is what I’m doing with this collection. This sense of being an artist and a survivor in a world where a lot of people don’t make it.”
Finding the Echoes: An Interview with Rebecca Makkai Read More »
* Zhanna Slor *
A weekday is like a nearly full water glass. Most of it gets filled with whatever happens when you arrive at your desk, and collapse into that cheap plastic rolling chair that’s never comfortable no matter how you sit in it. Whatever’s left takes up that tiny bit of space—that always seems to fly by in an instant—between getting home and crashing into bed. It is vital, at least for me, to take advantage of those little nooks and crannies of time—that ten minutes when you happen to arrive to work early. The forty-five minutes left after making and eating lunch. That fifteen minutes before sleep, while you lay in bed awake, your body not quite ready to drift off yet.
The Importance of Punctuation Read More »
* Zhanna Slor *
In the everlasting battle between book vs. movie, in this case, I would actually side with movie, since some of the writing, in my opinion, could have used a good bit of cutting. But overall, I ended up really connecting to the alternate reality she created. And not just because at least sixty percent of my dreams since adulthood for some reason involve some kind of post-apocalyptic future in which everyone must fight for survival, and therefore the world is very familiar to me, but because there is actually quite a lot of metaphorical resonance in the books. Often, this world, our world, feels to me like a longer, drawn-out Hunger Games; death fights to claim you, either through extreme weather or accident or illness or, like in the arena: murder.
Spartacus for Little Girls Read More »
* Zhanna Slor *
Disadvantages aside, I think watching a television show in its entirety can actually have some benefits, especially if you’re a writer of some kind. You learn how to easily spot plot-holes (uh, Battlestar Gallactica season four? The entire Heroes series?); you can learn about character-building (Walter White, Shane Vendrell, anyone created by Joss Whedon). You can also get a glimpse of what the current trends are (mystical creatures, criminal masterminds, and, as always, cops). You can also learn what to avoid, due to over-saturation (vampires!), or what to capitalize on (office dramas; quirky families).
What We Can Learn from TV (Seriously!) Read More »
* Zhanna Slor *
Enough already! First they start giving trophies to children who lose basketball games so that they don’t feel bad, now this. Creation is not its own reward, unless you’re really and truly creating for your eyes only. And in that case—by all means, paint away, just please don’t show me. Art, real art, is for other people. If it wasn’t, bookstores would be empty, art galleries would not exist, and you would never hear music at coffee shops, malls, bars, concert halls. Saying that you’ve created something for yourself only and yet posting it on Facebook is just a way of avoiding responsibility for its greatness or lack thereof.
… or Just Watch “Girls” Read More »
* Zhanna Slor *
Instead of knocking on wood, Russians will spit three times over their left shoulder. If a chicken crows at you three times before noon, the death of a close family member should be expected within the month. Talking about future success: bad luck. Birds that tap on your window: bad luck. Encountering or crossing the path of a funeral procession: bad luck. Bread cut with your hands instead of a knife: bad luck. A woman coming towards you with empty buckets (when would this even happen anymore?): bad luck. There is a very distinct pattern emerging here: nearly everything in the Soviet Union was a cause of bad luck! Though I really think most of it could just be attributed to living in the Soviet Union.
* Zhanna Slor *
Because the government decided to shut down immediately after I got married, weeks later, I still haven’t been able to change my last name legally with the Social Security office. Right now, about half my accounts have one last name listed and the other half have a different one. I’m in total name limbo.
* Zhanna Vaynberg *
Central Siberia has forty words for snow-like weather, and in the Inupiaq dialect of Wales, Alaska, there are about seventy terms for ice: “utuqaq,” ice that lasts year after year; “siguliaksraq,” the patchwork layer of ice crystals that form as the sea begins to freeze; and “auniq,” ice that is filled with holes, like Swiss cheese. Replace the word ‘ice’ with ‘love’ and it makes perfect sense to adopt these words as our own! They’d be much more accurate than the very general term “love.”
Do Like the Inupiaq Read More »
