Transcription - Kate Atkinson

Transcription is a 1981 British spy novel by Kate Atkinson that tells the story of Juliet Armstrong. It opens in 1981. Eighty year old Juliet has been struck by a car. Grievously injured, she begins reflecting on the complex life she has lived. In 1949, at the age of 18, Juliet was recruited by MI5 to transcribe secret recordings of meetings between British fascist sympathizers and an undercover agent. She is drawn deeper into espionage and is asked to infiltrate another British nazi group. She becomes part of a sting operation that leads the arrest of its members.

Ten years later in 1950 Juliet has left her work as an agent behind and works as a producer of children’s radio shows at the BBC where she finds herself confronted with figures from her past and realizes that she herself is being spied on by MI5.

There is a zigzagging chronology from 1981 to 1950 to 1940 and back again. There are so many characters who mask who they are and plotlines that veer off in unexpected directions that I had to keep doubling back to keep them all straight.

I was interested in the author’s note at the end where she talks about the source materials from which she drew her inspiration for the novel. I may return to some of the novels I read years ago about the Cambridge spies.

 

wainwrightbookbinding

Charlotte Wainwright’s bookbinding and marbling studio.

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Wash, a very short story by Stuart Dybek

In a slip that is the only thing pink about the day, she strains from the décolletage of a third-story window. Rain beats her with an intensity reserved for glass while she reels in the pulley line hand over hand, a shoulder strap down, a breast nearly slipping free as clothespins drop from between her teeth, just before she disappears into white furls, fighting in the sheets as the L streams by with its cargo of eyes.

All you’ll ever know of her is what you’ve already learned about hanging out wash.

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On The Day Dolly Died

Via Duck Soup

The Wisdom Of The Galaxy

A short scifi story by Will McMahon 

*There is a content warning at the top of the page*

When 2008 hit and I got laid off from Circuit City, a friend of mine managed to get me work at the local supermarket deli. It was a shit job, but I was beyond grateful at the time.

Interesting people work at the deli, or at least they did then. Ty was 6’4” and maybe 150lbs, the loud-mouthed stoner to my reserved stoner—that is to say, my best friend and the reason I had a job. Chester was something of a loner, with this long, greasy mullet, but was friendly enough. Tina was a punk rocker just here until her band made it on tour, with bright pink hair and anarchist tattoos. And then there was Roz, a quiet, middle-aged guy with thick glasses and a crew cut, whose nickname was short for Roswell, on account of the fact that he claimed he was being abducted by aliens.

The worst part of the job was the customers, who were entitled beyond belief and hardly seemed to view us as human (the feeling was mutual). Complaining about them was a favored pastime of Tina, Ty, and myself. Chester was more polite, to his credit, and Roz had his head in the stars. He worked Sunday to Thursday, and, every Thursday evening, he’d say goodbye to us in case the aliens decided to take him away for good that weekend, in which case he wouldn’t be able to come into work Sunday because he’d be on a ship hundreds of light-years away, learning the wisdom of the galaxy. We’d wish him bon voyage and see him again Sunday morning.

Our store manager Mike was, generally speaking, an asshole. Already a petty tyrant, the recession really juiced him up. There was a constant line of people in front of his office, begging for jobs; that kind of thing goes to a guy’s head. Ty had slipped me in because Mike somehow thought he was a good worker, but Mike’s asshole nature was well-remarked upon in the deli, and the rituals of light hazing I endured as the new guy usually centered around throwing me into conflict with him. The most frequent of these was stealing lemons from the produce section. Residue would build up in the deli’s ancient cheese slicer, and if you didn’t clean it out it would jam up. The cleaning gel was bright blue and noxious and took fifteen minutes to break down the gunk, and meanwhile the line would back up with customers losing their shit. The bootleg solution, then, was to run a couple lemons through the slicer; the acid cut right through the cheese residue, and we were back online within a minute or two.

Mike hated the lemon trick, claiming it damaged the machine. I don’t know if that was true, but, as far as we were concerned, the sooner that piece of shit broke down for good, the better. In the meantime, the lemons were the only things keeping us sane. Mike was always on the prowl, and he’d make sure to do his rounds coming through produce on the way to the deli, trying to catch us. He used to watch on the security cameras too, but Roz had figured out a way to sabotage the one near the deli and after that no one had been able to fix it. We asked him how he’d done it, and he just gave us this look like we didn’t want to know.

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Quote Of The Day

“Patriotism is proud of a country's virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country's virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, "the greatest", but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is.” 

- Sydney J. Harris, American journalist, author, and drama critic best known for his popular daily column, "Strictly Personal," which was syndicated in over 200 newspapers across the United States and Canada.

Garlands

Poet Alastair Reid arranged unusual words into “garlands,” rings that end where they began:

What is a Tingle-Airey?

A tingle-airey is a hand organ, usually played on the street by the turning of a handle, and often decorated with mother-of-pearl or piddock shells.

What are Piddocks?

Piddocks are little mollusks which bore holes in rocks and wood, or in the breastsummers of buildings.

What is a Breastsummer?

A breastsummer is a great beam supporting the weight of a wall, and sometimes of a gazebo above.

What is a Gazebo?

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Savage : The Making of Modern Dogs in British Hong Kong

China Books Review: Savage is a brief history of Hong Kong’s most beloved — or is it reviled? — inhabitants: dogs. Catherine Chan, a historian at Hong Kong’s Lingnan University, examines how dogs shaped work, play and politics from the territory’s colonial period (1842 to 1997) through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Time and Again

A short story by Breece D’J Pancake.

Mr Weeks called me out again tonight, and I look back down the hall of my house. I left the kitchen light burning. This is an empty old house since the old lady died. When Mr Weeks doesn’t call, I write everybody I know about my boy. Some of my letters always come back, and the folks who write back say nobody knows where he got off to. I can’t help but think he might come home at night when I am gone, so I let the kitchen light burn and go on out the door.

The cold air is the same, and the snow pellets my cap, sifts under my collar. I hear my hogs come grunting from their shed, thinking I have come to feed them. I ought to feed them better than that awful slop, but I can’t until I know my boy is safe. I told him not to go and look, that the hogs just squeal because I never kill them. They always squeal when they are happy, but he went and looked. Then he ran off someplace.

I brush the snow from my road plow’s windshield and climb in. The vinyl seats are cold, but I like them. They are smooth and easy cleaned. The lug wrench is where it has always been beside my seat. I heft it, put it back. I start the salt spreader, lower my shear, and head out to clean the mountain road.

The snow piles in a wall against the berm. No cars move. They are stranded at the side, and as I plow past them, a line falls in behind me, but they always drop back. They don’t know how long it takes the salt to work. They are common fools. They rush round in such weather and end up dead. They never sit still and wait for the salt to work.

I think I am getting too old to do this anymore. I wish I could rest and watch my hogs get old and die. When the last one is close to dying, I will feed him his best meal and leave the gate open. But that will most likely not happen, because I know this stretch of Route 60 from Ansted to Gauley, and I do a good job. Mr Weeks always brags on what a good job I do, and when I meet the other truck plowing the uphill side of this road, I will honk. That will be Mr Weeks coming up from Gauley. I think how I never met Mr Weeks in my life but in a snowplow. Sometimes I look out to Sewel Mountain and see snow coming, then I call Mr Weeks. But we are not friends. We don’t come around each other at all. I don’t even know if he’s got family.

I pass the rest stop at Hawks Nest, and a new batch of fools line up behind me, but pretty soon I am alone again. As I plow down the grade toward Chimney Corners, my lights are the only ones on the road, and the snow takes up the yellow spinning of my dome light and the white curves of my headlights. I smile at the pretties they make, but I am tired and wish I was home. I worry about the hogs. I should have given them more slop, but when the first one dies, the others will eat him quick enough.

I make the big turn at Chimney Corners and see a hitchhiker standing there. His front is clean, and he looks half frozen, so I stop to let him in.

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A Field of Finches Without Sight Still Singing

A poem by Grace Cavaliere, former poet laureate of Maryland.

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