Birth. “A detaching, a loosening of something, then the pain of it.” A small, curled and crinkled creature is wrested from that pain. But then, instead of the long-awaited cry of a... Read more »
In her landmark 1985 work, The Body in Pain, American essayist Elaine Scarry makes a case for the “unsharability” of pain and its resistance to language. “Physical pain,” she writes, “does not simply... Read more »
Curtis Sittenfeld is irresistibly drawn to the awkward: to the geeks, and to those who are not quite as attractive, confident, rich or successful as the peers with whom, often to everyone’s... Read more »