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I had made small drawings as preparations for paintings before. I like using pastel when I work directly from a motif because it’s so easy to use. You open the box of pastels and begin drawing. There’s no mixing of paints (though you can blend sticks of color together on the page). And as the light changes, you find that you’ve spent most of the time actually describing the scene rather than pausing for cleaning a brush or refreshing the paint. Then the drawings are there to use to create a painting, and the painting is thus slightly removed from the actual objects and opens a passage for imagination. Or so it seems to me. Every artist has his own way of working that feels right.

I paint in different ways. The idea of creating fully realized drawings to then…

»Phantasiestücke« hat Schumann mehrere seiner Klavierzyklen betitelt. Die Frage ist, was er damit gemeint haben könnte – wenn er denn darunter etwas Bestimmtes verstanden wissen wollte und der Titel nicht bloß als ein mehr oder weniger unverbindlicher Platzhalter für irgendetwas, das sich den vorgeprägten Formschemata nicht fügt, figuriert. Dafür spricht freilich wenig bei jemandem, der nicht nur komponierte, sondern Musikschriftstellerei auf höchstem Niveau betrieb. »Phantasie« ist offenbar ein bewusst gesetzter Kontrapunkt zu den Veranstaltungen der Vernunft, die auch in die Seelensprache der Musik eingedrungen sind. Die großen Formen, allen voran die der Sonate, die sich entäußern, um sich hernach zum Werk zu runden, das fest und kristallgleich in sich ruht; die großen Gebäude der Symphonie, die es verstehen, gewaltige Zeitmassen in sich aufzuhäufen und abzuspeichern – das, was die Phantasie produziert, ist das alles irgendwie NICHT. Es ist Musik als Prozess, folgend dem Gesetz von Differenz und Wiederholung, oder dem…

Eduard Limonov and Natalya Medvedeva in LA
Photograph by Alexander Polovets

When Eduard Limonov died on March 17, 2020, Russian literature lost one of its most controversial, undeniably original voices. Due to his despicable behavior during the Siege of Sarajevo, Limonov’s pugnacious, affecting, explosively funny novels are no longer sold in the English-speaking world; his poems are completely unknown. He had only himself to blame, of course, but it’s a loss for all of us… There’s nothing quite like his writing. Never mind — I come to bury Limonov, not to praise him. And to recount an adventure in Los Angeles.

Around 1981, after half a decade of slumming with punks and plotting with Trotskyists in New York, the exiled Limonov wound up in LA, where he met the love of his life, Natalya Medvedeva. You may not recognize her name, but you’ve likely seen her face — here…

The Chinese-born writer Yiyun Li has been on my radar for a while, ever since her 2019 novel Where Reasons End popped up in my Twitter timeline with recommendations from readers I trust. Published last year with equally positive reviews, The Book of Goose is my first experience of Li’s work, but hopefully not my last. It’s a strange, compelling, captivating novel, full of different layers and ideas. On one level, we have a story about childhood friendship, devotion, manipulation and the power dynamics of relationships; but on another, the novel digs deep into the power of storytelling and the games children play to escape boredom – how fantasies can become truths if we pursue them too avidly, blurring the lines between the real and the imaginary. There’s so much to absorb with this one, and I’ll probably be thinking about it for a long time to come…

The book…