This is the archive page for Otium, Volume 2, Number 4.
It was the eve of Friday the 13th and the Otium staff was thinking magically, thinking in Magnetic Poetry. On the fridge, words that described Vol 2, issue 4 appeared in eerie yet accurate combos. Deanna realized that she could ILLUSTRATE A MONSTER in her screenplay as Josh Schonwald does in “The Rise of Hitler Humor.” She could also DESIRE EACH MAGIC LIBRARY of the kind Sarah Frank conjures in her interview with fiction writer Joan Silber.
Soon, all had gathered round the fridge. Sounds ushered from a RADIO BELOVED like the one in “Birthday of a Nation,” Emily Alpert’s reflection on South African nationalism. Rich was moved to note that the phrase FAVORITE VIVID FANTASY echoed the unexpected twists in Megan Stielstra’s short story “In Order to Remove the Boot.”
Later, Alexis would confess over pizza that the multiplicity of voices struggling over history in Achy Obejas’s script “Tower of the Antilles” made her IMAGINE PEOPLE BUILDING. Everybody was convinced that the structure of “Love, Mum,” a short story by Hungarian writer Miklós Vámos told entirely through notes, would make Sarah Frank want to CRY AFTER ROMANCE & DRAMA.
Before one am, “Proof” playwright and University of Chicago grad David Auburn’s comments on the HAUNTING CHARACTER SCIENCE in his plays had been read in triplicate, giving Jenna a chance to tell Otium’s tale in a new About section. That was considered lucky.
Bang. Slam.
Deanna Day and Sarah Frank, Volume Two Coordinators
on Behalf of The Otium Staff
Vol. 2 No. 4 Articles
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A Conversation With David Auburn
by Zachary Werner
13 January 2006The story needs Chicago, I think. It needs the melancholy atmosphere that I often felt in Hyde Park. In coffee shops, wandering around the bookstores, you’d often see these people—usually men, middle aged, clearly not students, not faculty either; it was hard to tell what they were—they were these sort of perennial campus ghosts haunting the place. You got the sense that they’d slipped off the tracks somehow. Sometimes there would be little legends attached to them—you’d hear that this guy or that one was a brilliant prodigy who cracked up spectacularly. I suppose any big University has these figures, but it feels like a particularly Chicago phenomenon to me.
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The Rise of Hitler Humor
by Josh Schonwald
13 January 2006When I tell him that I’m from Chicago, and that Chicago has a large German immigrant population, he instinctively improvises in Hitler’s voice and cadence. “Chicago has and always will be, German, and it should be German again.” At another moment, after a few more sakes, and a few words about the post-September 11th world, he says, “Civilization must rise up and fight terrorism. You know who said that?” he asks. “George Bush,” I say, confidently. “Hitler,” he says, smiling devilishly.
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The Tower of the Antilles
by Achy Obejas
13 January 2006VOICE 2:
The men went naked …
VOICE 3:
… casi siempre …
VOICE 2:
… for the most part.
VOICE 1:
The women frequently wore short skirts but breasts were generally bared.
VOICE 3:
Se aplanaban las frentes amarrándose un plato duro antes de que estuvieran formadas.
VOICE 1:
They flattened their foreheads by binding them with a hard plate …
VOICE 2:
… before they were fully formed.
VOICE 3:
This way their heads slanted, reflecting light back to the heavens.
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A Conversation with Joan Silber
by Sarah Adair Frank
13 January 2006SF:
“Hot and heavy” is a pretty good phrase for many of the relationships in your fiction. What does it mean to write sexy, but also keep your language spare? Does this have anything to do with the “paragraphs laden with treacle and gravitas” you have said that you had to cut when trying to get at the longing in the “My Shape” story?
JS:
The key thing about sex scenes (I decided some time ago) is to keep them linked to character. The mechanics don’t have to be explained step by step (any adult can guess the rudiments).
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In Order to Remove the Boot
by Megan Stielstra
13 January 2006By the time she’d finished all the letters, the bottle was gone, too, and Penny cried twenty-six proof for all the things he was supposed to have said but hadn’t. I love you and I need you and sweetheart and darling, and before she knew it she was ripping the letters into little pieces, slowly at first, with deliberate, even tears—riiiip—I think of you often?—riiip—Fortunate to have met?—riiiiip—You’ve been considering? But as she threw the little confetti scraps into the air she knew that he was the closest she’d ever get to love—and the ripping got fast and angry and destructive, papers flying around the bedroom, origami birds crunched underfoot, deep gutsy sobs pulling from her middle ‘till she finally collapsed in a lump and balled into the carpeting, that sniveling pathetic sort of crying, the soundtrack to desperate acts.
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Birthday of a Nation
by Emily Alpert
13 January 2006I was reminded that those in power are usually the philistines, the ones ignorant of the world and its cultures, because they don’t need to know. It’s the less powerful, or powerless, who toss out foreign phrases with ease, whose minds have been limbered by an accommodation with power. In South Africa, minibus drivers and short-order cooks opine knowledgeably on the Bush Administration; in the townships, American hip-hop and soap operas blare. Of course, a comparable American competence on South Africa is sorely lacking, and often South African friends would rib us, asking if we’d expected elephants and lions upon coming to Cape Town. Our denials were usually laughed off, dismissively.
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Love, Mum
by Miklós Vámos
13 January 2006Mum,
They’ve taken Grandma off in an ambulance. And Grandpa has smashed the water jug and he drank two bottles of wine and he’s raving drunk. Take this parcel in to Granny. It’s got a nightgown, slippers, and soap in it. She’s at St. Roch’s. I’m off to drawing class.
Mari
Otium
