Dear friends,
"Got to swallow right away. Don't taste it. Don't chew it"—advice hot from the confessional booth of Monica Byrne's story "Gustus Dei" from Baffler No. 27. "She heard Mother Anne's voice coming to her as if in a dream. 'Daughter Theresa?' she called. 'Are you—'
"Mother Anne opened the door and looked in. Sister Theresa was half-lying on her bed, the Holy Eucharist in one hand, and egg paste in the other.
"Mother Anne stood in the doorway. Sister Theresa remained silent and frozen. There was no way to explain anything. Her face drained of blood." Crumbs.
What else is there to chomp on then?
Our Brodsky event, of course, is on Sunday (RSVP here), and William Giraldi's review of Victor Serge's Midnight in the Century, written in exile in the Urals, can be found on the Baffler blog. "Stalinism's sinister achievement," Giraldi writes, "was to turn truth into farce and farce into life; to bowdlerize the past and nullify the future, leaving only the unwavering ache of the present."
"Contemporaneous with both Kafka and Orwell, Serge can read like an alloy of both."
We hope you enjoy.
—The Baffler
