"No R" -- a short story by David Lehman [with a coda by Borges]

<<< Kaminsky knows how to survive in the magazine business: start a magazine that almost nobody can understand, and become the darling of the academy
>>>

from "No R," a story by David Lehman, in The American Scholar. Click here to read this three-part story that wowed the crowd at KGB Bar in February 2013 when Lehman read it aloud.

And remember what Jorge Luis Borges said: "I respect translators, and my stories have sometimes been greatly bettered by them. One of them told me so himself. Besides, I am so fond of English that I like anything better in English than in Spanish." While the relevance of this quote to "No R" is not obvious, people of good faith can figure it out. Borges also declared unequivocally that Robert Louis Stevenson "is the most wonderful writer of all English writers, after Shakespeare."

Comments

[russell edsel]

Very nice--"nonpareil" ambushed me.

[Marissa Despain]

Don't forget about No Z the magazine dedicated to a behind the scenes look at gossip magazines and British tabloids.

[The Best American Poetry]

Thank you, Russell -- et merci Marissa for your clever suggestion: No Z, the magazine for Nosy Parkers everywhere. I always liked it that folks we call nosy bodies the Brits call nosy parkers.

This is what Mark Minton proposes:

"No M -- The magazine of choice among Russian ravanchists who claim that Alaska was never sold to the U.S. and all English place names there should revert to their Russian origins. This magazine is also popular among anti-Buddhist fanatics who deplore the inane chanting of the religion's mindless, narcotic devotional ditties."

No M might also have an appeal for people who feel strongly, pro or con, about a certain influential, somewhat enigmatic, and very cunning linguist with radical political views and a curious agenda. -- DL

[The Best American Poetry]

Jamie Katz's candidates (from The American Scholars page) delight me

<<<
In addition to the titles David Lehman describes, the fellows of Winged Foot University—whose endowment is founded, incidentally, on a winning bet between billionaires at the Westchester golf club that famously refused membership to Bill Clinton—have recently added three more digital resources targeted at the tenure-track trade:

No D: The Journal for People Who are Kind of Interested in the Lymphatic System;

No X-it, devoted to post-structuralist interrogations of Sartre’s Huis Clos; and

No N, a much needed complement for those who know where and how, from the editors of No Y.
>>>

No X-it is a, existential natural! -- DL

[Mark Minton]

Yes, David, I wish I had thought of that obvious No M association! You could have helped me get there, however, if you had just called your narrator "Chomsky." Alas. Mark