Red Clocks(80)

To go to the protest in May.

To do more than go to a protest.

To be okay with not knowing.

Keep your legs, Stephens.

To see what is. And to see what is possible.





NOTES


Some details of European animal trials are taken from E. P. Evans’s The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals (London: William Heinemann, 1906).

“City born of the terror of the vastness of space”: W. G. Sebald, “And If I Remained by the Outermost Sea,” in After Nature, translated by Michael Hamburger (New York: Random House, 2003; first published in German by Eichborn AG [Frankfurt am Main], 1988).

Details of blindness curing and drum shattering are taken from Francesco Maria Guazzo’s Compendium Maleficarum, translated by E. A. Ashwin (London: John Rodker, 1929; first published in Latin by Apud Haeredes August [Milan], 1608).

“Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest … And not one syllable is thine”; “Has moved amid this world’s foundations … when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck”: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (London: Richard Bentley, 1851).

“When I lay with my bouncing Nell, I gave her an inch, but she took an Ell: But … it was damnable hard, When I gave her an inch, she’d want more than a Yard”: John Davies of Hereford, “Wits Bedlam” (1617), in A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature, vol. 1, by Gordon Williams (London: Athlone Press, 1994).

“They rob the poor under the cover of law … and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage”: Captain Samuel Bellamy, as recorded in A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, by Captain Charles Johnson [pseud.] (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2010; originally published in 1724).

“I love the old way best, the simple way / Of poison, where we too are strong as men”: The Medea of Euripides, translated by Gilbert Murray (New York: Oxford University Press [American Branch], 1907; first performed in 431 BC).

“Geography has made us neighbors ….Those whom nature hath so joined together, let no man put asunder”: John F. Kennedy, “Address Before the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa” [speech], May 17, 1961, online transcript, The American Presidency Project website, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=8136.

“The red morn betoken’d wreck … to herdmen and to herds”: William Shakespeare, “Venus and Adonis,” in The Works of William Shakespeare, vol. 2, edited by Charles Knight (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1875), ebook.

“We are the dinosaurs, marching, marching … We are the dinosaurs. We make the earth flat!”: Laurie Berkner Band, “We Are the Dinosaurs,” Whaddaya Think of That? (New York: Two Tomatoes Records, 1997).

“I have been lifted off the earth to sit on the ocean …” borrows from a line in Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out (London: Duckworth, 1915): “how strangely they had been lifted off the earth to sit next each other in mid ocean …”

“Warm as toast, smaller than most”: Margaret Wise Brown, Little Fur Family (New York: Harper Brothers, 1946).

Some particulars of Mínervudottír’s ice research are taken from Adolphus Washington Greely’s Handbook of Arctic Discoveries (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1896).





ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS


I am grateful beyond measure to Lee Boudreaux, whose brilliant editing led this book into bolder, deeper territory; and to the phenomenal Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, who has been my dream agent in every way. Huge thanks also to Suzie Dooré, my editor in the UK, for her astute suggestions and excellent sense of humor.

For their artistry and expertise, I’m indebted to Carina Guiterman at Lee Boudreaux Books; Charlotte Cray at The Borough Press; Lauren Harms, Karen Landry, Sabrina Callahan, Katharine Myers, and Julie Ertl at Little, Brown; the keen-eyed Dianna Stirpe; Alice Lawson at Gersh; and Reiko Davis, Colin Farstad, Linda Kaplan, and Gabbie Piraino at DeFiore and Company.

Thanks to the Money for Women / Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and the Regional Arts and Culture Council for their generosity, as well as to the editors of Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art and Winged: New Writing on Bees, where excerpts from this novel appeared, in very different form.

For their encouragement, support, and inspiration, I thank Heather Abel, John Beer, Liz Ceppi, Paul Collins, Sarah Ensor, Brian Evenson, Jennifer Firestone, Michele Glazer, Adria Goodness, Amy Eliza Greenstadt, Noy Holland, Alastair Hunt, Michelle Latiolais, Elena Leyva, Nanci McCloskey, Tony Perez, Peter Robbins, Shauna Seliy, Sophia Pfaff Shalmiyev, Anna Joy Springer, and Adam Zucker. Special gratitude to the early readers of this manuscript: Zelda Alpern, Kate Blackwell, Eugene Lim, and Diana Zumas.

Thank you to my family: Kate, Felix, Diana, Casey, Bridget, Greg, and little Charles. E grazie ai miei amici e alla mia famiglia in Italia: Lucia Bertagnolli, Pietro Dipierro, Chiara Berattino, e Federico Zanatta.

Above all else, thank you to Luca, for his fierce and marvelous love; and to Nicholas, for being exactly himself.





ABOUT THE AUTHOR


LENI ZUMAS is the author of the story collection Farewell Navigator and the novel The Listeners, which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. She teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at Portland State University.