Page 20 | Harper's Magazine

20th century

Polivanov’s Dream

by Serena Vitale,Translated by Jamie Richards,

From a response by the Russian literary critic Viktor Shklovsky (1893–1984) to a question by Serena Vitale, during an interview in Moscow in December 1978. Yevgeni Polivanov, who like Shklovsky…

Sliver of Sky

by Barry Lopez,

Confronting the trauma of sexual abuse

Anarchist Calisthenics

by James C. Scott,

From Two Cheers for Anarchism, published last month by Princeton University Press. Scott is Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University. In the summer of 1990, in an effort…

A Question of Circumstances

by Luigi Pintor,Translated by Gregory Elliott,

From Servabo: A Fin de Siècle Memoir, first published in Italian in 1991, and included in Memories from the Twentieth Century, edited by Alberto Toscano, a collection of three of…

I Am Your Conscious, I Am Love

by Hilton Als,

A paean 2 Prince

The Cake Killer

by Jerzy N. Kosinski,

From “ ‘Being There’ in Toronto,” a May 3, 1987, speech by Jerzy Kosinski. Oral Pleasure, a collection of Kosinski’s speeches, essays, and interviews, edited by Barbara Tepa Lupack and Kiki…

Give Bleach a Chance

by John Lennon,

From a 1979 letter by John Lennon to a laundry in New York City, where Lennon lived with his wife, Yoko Ono. The John Lennon Letters was published by Little,…

Piggy Bank

by William Styron,

From a June 8, 1972, letter by William Styron to Frederick Exley, the author of A Fan’s Notes, who was a guest lecturer at the University of Iowa that year.…