Welcome!

The author in the fog.

Hello!

Welcome to my Substack, “No More Abysses, No More Walls.” I’ve been planning on starting one of these since at least last September, and now it is finally time. Topics to expect: contemporary fiction (reviews, musings, craft stuff); left politics; Israel/Palestine, anti-Zionism; other assorted Jewish stuff; Phish and other musical musings. I may even post a story or poem or two. Mostly though, it will be about fiction. Some future letters already percolating: a comparison between short stories by Nicole Krauss and Saeed Teebi. A look at what I call “narrating the paradigm shift” in the work of Ted Chiang. An ode to the joy of rereading.

            A bit about myself: I have three published books, with a few more on the way, including my monograph, Leaving Other People Alone: Diaspora, Zionism, and Palestine in Contemporary Jewish Fiction, which is coming out this spring (and is available for pre-order!). My latest book, the poetry collection Shifting Baseline Syndrome, was a finalist for the 2022 Governor General’s Award for Poetry, and was included on the CBC’s Best Poetry Books of 2022 list. My first two books, the poetry collection Arguments for Lawn Chairs and the story collection You and Me, Belonging, are both available for free download on my website. Check them out! Besides my work, I live in Toronto, and am doing a postdoc on settler colonialism and Jewish world literature at Carleton University. My politics could broadly be described as anarcho Land Back eco-socialist diasporic.

            The title of the Substack is from Ursula K. Le Guin’s masterpiece The Dispossessed. Before I read this book, I would always claim I didn’t have a favourite novel. “Why have a favourite novel?!” I would protest. Now, when I’m asked, it’s The Dispossessed, The Dispossessed, The Dispossessed. I’ll close this opening missive with a prose poem I wrote remixing some lines from the novel, including the phrase I borrowed for the title. When Shevek discovers a deep physical and metaphysical truth of the makeup of the universe, he sees that at root, our material and spiritual world is solid, is just. By playing around with the language of Le Guin’s sentence, I hope to show that our world, too, can be without abysses, without walls.

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Foundations
Aaron Kreuter

“There were no more abysses, no more walls. There was no more exile. He had seen the foundations of the universe, and they were solid.” -Ursula Le Guin, The Dispossessed

He had seen the foundations of the universe, and they were solid. He had seen the foundations of the universe, and they were tangential. He had seen the basements of the universe, and they were sopping. He had seen the treehouses of the empire, and they were corrupt. She had seen the mail routes of the bookclub, and they were telling. They had tasted the bagels of the metropolis, and they were fecund. We had touched the hearts of the living, and they were fevered. You had heard the songs of the desperate, and they were open-concept. He had seen the foundations of the universe (the universe the universe), and they were solid.