Most Read... Rebecca WattsThe Cult of the Noble Amateur
(PN Review 239)
John McAuliffeBill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259)
Eavan BolandA Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121)
Patricia CraigVal Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259)
Vahni CapildeoOn Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237)
Tim Parksin conversation with Natalia Ginzburg
(PN Review 49)
Next Issue Hal Coase 'Ochre Pitch' Gregory Woods 'On Queerness' Kirsty Gunn 'On Risk! Carl Phillips' Galina Rymbu 'What I Haven't Written' translated by Sasha Dugdale Gabriel Josipovici 'No More Stories' Valerie Duff-Strautmann 'Anne Carson's Wrong Norma'
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
PN Review 275
PN Review Substack

This report is taken from PN Review 199, Volume 37 Number 5, May - June 2011.

Concurrent Sentences Frank Kuppner
[Translate the following as accurately as you can into any of the three or four Ancient Phictish Languages.]

1. Basic

Everything is just this.

Too much happens.
[NB. Take care to avoid any suggestion of: Too much happens here.]

Proud to be a former country!

Nothing runs up against Death.
[NB. Render this uncertain phrase in at least three quite distinct forms. Then do the same for: Everything is the result of trivial causes.]

Please do not be somebody else, darling.
[Take particular care to avoid: Please do not remember somebody else, darling.]

Perhaps nothing is more difficult, Hemlut, than simply telling the truth about ordinary life.

Why did it take me so long to realise I was more or less completely wasting my time?

It is so tragic to be limited by the details of mere reality.

I get a very pronounced sense that there is someone else in the room right now.

But surely we are all somebody else, Father?

I have never sought to disguise the fact, darling, that I am pretty much past caring.

So, it must presumably have been a heart problem all along!

A cold, unforgiving, private silence spread out insidiously over morning after morning after morning.


2. Intermediate

But surely, Uncle Frankie, the Universe must always be ...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image