Contributions by María Gainza
María Gainza is a regular contributor to Radar, the culture supplement from Argentine newspaper Página/12, as well as to the journal Artforum. She teaches a workshop on writing about art at Di Tella University. In 2011, her book Textos elegidos (Selected Writings) was published by Capital intelectual. She has worked as a correspondent for The New York Times in Buenos Aires and as editor of the Argentine art collection at the publishing house Adriana Hidalgo. Her first American epiphanies were Salinger, Emily Dickinson, Carson McCullers, and Cheever. A few months ago, she read everything she could find by Joan Didion and kicked herself for not having read her before. She lives between Buenos Aires and an old house by the sea, in a little town that reminds her of Malibu and of a scrapyard, in equal measure.
The Red and the Black
María Gainza
translated by Jane Brodie
I’m scared. I’m sitting on a plastic chair waiting to see the doctor. It’s a cold spring morning and I’ve come here because my right eye has been twitching for several days. It throbs—intensely, insanely, especially the lower lid. I sometimes think it’s going to burst. I have ruled out the most obvious causes: it’s not fatigue because it sometimes starts up just five minutes after I wake up; it’s not strain because I haven’t read a thing for a week; it’s not alcohol or cigarettes or coffee because I’m a strict ascetic; I don’t believe in stress. I’ve considered possible illnesses. I went online and found forums for people with a twitch in their eye. One group even invited me to one of the meetings they have on Monday nights in … Read More »
sending...