It is an insolent cliché, almost, to note that our culture lacks the proper script for ending friendships. We have no rituals to observe, no paperwork to do, no boilerplate dialogue to crib from.
Yet when Elisa Albert and Rebecca Wolff were in the final throes of their friendship, they managed, entirely by accident, to leave behind just such a script. The problem was that it read like an Edward Albee play—tart, unsparing, fluorescent with rage.
I met Elisa one evening in 2008, after an old friend’s book reading. She was such mesmerizing company that I rushed out to buy her debut novel, The Book of Dahlia, which had been published a few months earlier. I was instantly struck by how unafraid of darkness and emotional chaos she was. The same articulate fury suffused After Birth, her follow-up; her next book, Human Blues (her “monster,” as she likes to say), comes out in July.
Rebecca is someone I knew only by reputation until recently. She’s the founding editor of the literary magazine Fence, a haven for genre-resistant writing and writers that’s now almost 25 years old. She’s also the author of a novel and four poetry collections, including Manderley, selected by the National Poetry Series; she has a fifth coming out in the fall.
この記事は The Atlantic の March 2022 版に掲載されています。
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この記事は The Atlantic の March 2022 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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