Author Bookshelf
by Esther Yi, March 22, 2023 9:05 AM
I’m haunted by a handful of writers all long dead. They set the standard; naturally I fail. Anything I read of theirs promptly enters my bloodstream, whereupon mysterious internal fomentation proceeds. Y/N is simply the latest extrusion, a concerted one, of that fomentation. In other words, nothing in particular inspired my novel, because everything important has.
Soul (written in the 1930s, published much later)
by Andrei Platonov
“Everything in the existing world seemed strange to him; it was as if the world had been created for some brief, mocking game. But this game of make-believe had dragged on for a long time, for eternity, and nobody felt like laughing any more. The desert’s deserted emptiness, the camel, even the pitiful wandering grass — all this ought to be serious, grand and triumphant. Inside every poor creature was a sense of some other happy destiny, a destiny that was necessary and inevitable — why, then, did they find their lives such a burden and why were they always waiting for something?”
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1956)
by Yukio Mishima
“‘Finally I have come to live beside you, Golden Temple!’ I whispered in my heart, and for a while I stopped sweeping the leaves. ‘It doesn’t have to be at once, but please make friends with me sometime and reveal your secret to me. I feel that your beauty is something that I am very close to seeing and yet cannot see. Please let me see the real Golden Temple more clearly than I see the image of you in my mind. And furthermore, if you are indeed so beautiful that nothing in this world can compare with you, please tell me why you are so beautiful, why it is necessary for you to be beautiful.’”
Letters to Felice (composed 1912–1917)
by Franz Kafka
“If you haven’t got pink cheeks, how can I make them pale, since that is my job? If you are not lively, how can I make you tired; if you are not gay, how can I depress you? Dearest, my dearest, out of love for you, only out of love, I would like to dance with you; for I now feel that dancing, this embracing and turning at the same time, belongs inseparably to love and is its true and crazy expression. Oh God, I have said a lot in this letter, but my head is just as full of love as of things to tell you.”
The Tanners (1907)
by Robert Walser
“I’d expected to be able to sell books in your shop, wait on elegant individuals, bow and bid adieu to the customers when they’re ready to depart. What’s more, I’d imagined I might be allowed to peer into the mysterious universe of the book trade and glimpse the world’s features in the visage and operation of your enterprise. But I experienced nothing of the sort. Do you imagine my young years in such a sorry state that I need to crumple up and suffocate in a lousy bookshop? You are equally mistaken if you suppose, for example, that a young man’s back exists in order to be hunched. Why didn’t you allocate for my use a good proper desk so I could comfortably sit or stand? Are not splendid American-sized desks available for purchase?’”
Prose
by Thomas Bernhard
From “Is it a Comedy? Is it a Tragedy?” (1967)
“I sit down on a bench by the Meierei...and observe, intently, with pleasure, with tremendous concentration, who goes into the theatre and how they do it. It gratifies me not to go inside.”
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Esther Yi is the author of Y/N, out now from Astra House.
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