From the Archives
by Christina Thompson
Harvard Review 23
Art Appreciation
by Theresa Rebeck
Harvard Review 25
It Was Romance
by Miranda July
In this edition of “From the Archives” we present the work of two women who are best known for their work in the worlds of theatre and film. Theresa Rebeck, whose current play on Broadway, Seminar, stars Alan Rickman as a famous writer who gives private lessons to aspiring young novelists, is herself a wonderfully witty writer. The author of innumerable film and television screenplays, as well as a novel, Rebeck is a two-time contributor to Harvard Review. In this issue we present her droll little monologue, “Art Appreciation” (or, as I always think of it, “Having Your Own Vermeer”), which appeared originally in HR 23.
The second of our archival treasures this time round is a short story by the writer and filmmaker Miranda July. July, whose most recent film, The Future, is described by the New York Times as an “ingeniously constructed wonder cabinet of a movie,” is also the author of a short story collection titled No One Belongs Here More Than You. Her story “It Was Romance,” which appears in this collection, was originally published in HR 25.
It Was Romance is from the collection No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July. Copyright © 2007 by Miranda July. Reprinted by permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Harvard Review 21
The Hands of Lady Jane Grey
by Elizabeth Smither
Harvard Review 34
In the Pines
by Kevin Moffett
HR ONLINE #6: Ever since we began featuring pieces from the Harvard Review archives I have wanted to do a selection from what I think of as one of my editorial sub-specialties: stories about old ladies. Here we present two of my favorites. The first is a story by the New Zealand writer Elizabeth Smither. Smither is a woman of many talents, a short-story writer, a novelist, and a poet (she was New Zealand’s Poet Laureate in 2002), and I have been publishing her work for almost fifteen years, going right back to the days when I was editor at the Australian journal Meanjin. This story, “The Hands of Lady Jane Grey,” comes from my first issue of Harvard Review, HR 21.
The second selection, and another of my all-time favorites, is “In the Pines” by Kevin Moffett. This story, which describes a series of encounters between an elderly woman and a Civil War reenactor, speaks to the increasing fluidity of memory, imagination, and reality with the passage of time. Like “The Hands of Lady Jane Grey,” it captures something profound about the twilight world of old age, which is not so much dim as oddly—and sometimes brilliantly—illuminated. We hope you will enjoy the rare combination of compassion and wit exhibited by these stories.
Harvard Review 23
Problems for Self-Study
by Charles Yu
Harvard Review 33
Rodolfo and Nelida
by Jason Lewis
HR ONLINE #5: In our continuing series entitled “From the Archives,” we look at the work of two young fiction writers both of whom were published for the first time in Harvard Review. While this is unusual it is certainly not unheard of, and we are always ecstatic when it occurs. We think it’s our job to discover new writers and there is something particularly exciting about publishing a writer, young or old, who has never had anything in print before.
Charles Yu’s first published story, “Problems for Self-Study” (HR 23), leapt out at us not just because of its eccentric presentation (which might as easily have worked against it), but because it miraculously managed to pack a complex and moving human drama into the rigid confines of a formal outline. A clever and quirky illustration of the principle of expressive form, the story examines the limitations of a schematic worldview in the face of such messy human emotions as love. Yu, who practices law in California, has gone on to publish both a novel, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (Pantheon, 2010), and a short story collection, Third Class Superhero (Mariner, 2006).
Jason Lewis’s story, “Rodolfo and Nelida” (HR 33), was another, quite different kind of pleasure. Pulled from the slush pile by a reader, it impressed us all with its vitality and freshness. A rough, lively, unexpected tale about drug runners and romance, it was all the more refreshing to us in New England because of its southwestern setting. In 2007 the author’s biographical note read: “Jason Lewis is a twenty-four-year-old college drop-out with a novel in progress. He was born in Texas, raised in Minnesota, and currently makes his home in New Mexico. This is his first publication.” Whether he went on to finish either the novel or the degree we unfortunately don’t know, but we think he made a promising beginning.
Harvard Review 29
Lapponia
by Barbara Sjoholm
Harvard Review 30
Our So-Called Illustrious Past
by Kathryn Rhett
HR ONLINE #4: I have now edited Harvard Review for ten years and it occurs to me that my own memory of the journal constitutes a particular sort of archive. Not alphabetical, not always perfectly searchable, not even necessarily complete, but unique in that every entry is cross-referenced in some idiosyncratic way. I know, as perhaps no one else in the world knows, that there are clusters among the hundreds of stories and essays that we have published over these years. Some have to do with subject matter: we have, for example, a number of stories about old ladies, also several excellent pieces told from a child's point of view. Sometimes the organizing principle is formal: there are pieces that do not resemble each other in the least but are linked in my mind because they are similarly experimental.
From the Archives is a new feature of HROnline showcasing prose selections from the past ten years. Our inaugural selections are a pair of essays on historical subjects by two writers united in my mind by their fine ear, their dry wit, and the deftness with which they move from image to idea. We hope you enjoy Barbara Sjoholm’s “Lapponia” from HR 29 and Kathryn Rhett’s “Our So-Called Illustrious Past” from HR 30.
