One of the things about stories is that for them to be interesting, something usually goes wrong. As a result, a large number of the articles, profiles and essays we feature cover unfortunate events, whether recent or recalled from the distant past. This week is no exception, but we can promise that each story is [...]
Tag Archives: Granta
What we’re reading, in which we contemplate a hit-and-run fatality, the death of Glenn Beck’s mother and the declining lethality of quicksand
September 30, 2010 – 11:55 am
Aminatta Forna interview on “The Last Vet”
March 5, 2010 – 4:13 pm
We recently talked with Aminatta Forna about her Granta essay “The Last Vet,” which follows the work of Dr. Gudush Jalloh in his clinic at Freetown, Sierra Leone. Forna, who has produced television programs, written a memoir and penned prize-winning fiction, uses her piece on Jalloh to consider the treatment [...]
Aminatta Forna’s “The Last Vet”: a dog’s life
March 4, 2010 – 2:23 pm
Our latest Notable Narrative traces relations between humans and animals in the poorest country on earth. In “The Last Vet,” which appeared in the winter 2009 issue of Granta, writer Aminatta Forna follows Dr. Gudush Jalloh, the last veterinarian in private practice in Sierra Leone, as he treats and sterilizes dogs at his Freetown clinic.
Living [...]
Interview with Mary Gaitskill: lessons from “Lost Cat”
October 6, 2009 – 2:07 pm
Today we offer the second installment of a two-part look at narrative nonfiction from Granta’s summer issue. I spoke with author Mary Gaitskill about “Lost Cat,” her memoir on the disappearance of an adopted pet, and how she connected the loss to other events in her life.
On the topic of using the piece to examine her own motives, she says, “I think that one’s own motives are interesting. Everybody’s motives are interesting… True feeling is often hidden under superficial or more attractive feelings; selfish motives are often wound up with truly altruistic ones.”
She references the Grace Paley adage about fiction being a lie you tell to get to a bigger truth, and talks about the difference between writing fiction and nonfiction. Fiction, she says, “is a lie if you believe it literally. It’s a story that didn’t happen, but it illuminates the idea. I express myself much more plainly or directly with nonfiction. With fiction, I am largely speaking the language of metaphor, which people frequently mistake for literal communication.”
Read the full interview.
Interview with Mitch Epstein: Images of “American Power”
October 5, 2009 – 3:40 pm
In September, photographer Mitch Epstein spoke by phone with us about his project “American Power,” which was highlighted in Granta’s summer issue. Epstein has worked as a fine art photographer and a photojournalist, as well as a director, cinematographer, or production designer on several films. While “American Power” was not done as a commercial news narrative, it is rooted in story, and Epstein had some interesting things to say about how images do and don’t work as narratives. Here are some excerpts:
“With photography, I think one can suggest narrative. But it is not the same as literary storytelling. I think that I do maybe more storytelling and develop a kind of more definitive narrative with the way in which I put my pictures together as exhibitions and books. That’s part of what excites me about books. They have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The way in which the pictures get strong in their sequence does indeed lead you through an experience. And you have to arrive at a final point.”
“An individual photo can suggest a narrative. It can imply a narrative. They’re better in a way at articulating questions than they are at delivering answers.”
Read the full interview.
Picturing the cost of power
October 5, 2009 – 12:23 pm
Mitch Epstein’s “American Power” depicts the landscape as political narrative. The American photographer, who has chronicled cultural complexities in India and Vietnam, now homes his camera in on dissonances within his own culture. The subject of “American Power” is energy in America—its production, consumption, and unintended consequences. And embedded in the terrain of the images is a critique of American power in the other sense of the word—its destructiveness and contradictions. Like an unflattering mirror, Epstein’s pictures reflect back the troublesome realities that the exercise of American power can create.
Read the full essay.
