Introduction

Abstract

Introduction Jim Hicks BACK IN 2012, THE FAULKNER estate attempted to sue Sony Pictures Classics over the use of what a CNN article called “one of the most-quoted lines in American literature.” The verdict was, unsurprisingly, that size matters. After all, the quote in question—actually two lines, and cited incorrectly in the Woody Allen script—consists of only nine words from a novel. You have to hope that the fig leaf of fair use still covers that. Plus, as I always say, plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery. That the film paraphrased rather than quoted isn’t surprising; after all, Obama was similarly sloppy just a few years before. What both Woody and Barack did get right is more revealing: from Faulkner’s bon mot, everyone apparently remembers the clever repetition and apparent paradox—that the word “past” is “not even past.” Though I’m not a linguist, I suspect the reason we remember Faulkner’s words stems from the signal, not the signification: this use of the word “past,” to my ear, echoes its history as a variant of the participle “passed,” for which it is a near-homonym. In other words, one layer under Faulkner’s sentence lies a more active observation, that the past hasn’t yet passed— that it still haunts us, in the present. The presence of pastness is this issue’s guiding spirit. Reflecting on her country’s years of military dictatorship, an Argentine friend once told me that the so-called disappeared haven’t been the biggest problem for fans of the junta. It’s the ones they didn’t kill—the reappeared—that the militant right really worries about. So perhaps we shouldn’t be overly surprised, then, that Nixon apparently did try to have Daniel Ellsberg killed—though that is by no means the central revelation, nor the “Nixon Doctrine” that the Ellsberg piece in this issue names. The US war in Vietnam still haunts the poets John Balaban and Bob Dow as well; here be contributions that invite readers to [End Page 204] walk in their shoes. Two poems by Matt Donovan tread different, though not unrelated, paths of violence, and Dianne Seuss adds three others, weaving together personal history and craft meditation. Two stories in translation—from Simone Baldelli, translated by Oonagh Stransky and Enrica Maria Ferrara, and from Katrin Schmidt, in the English of Sue Vickerman—show how apparently distant conflict may erupt or return to the surface, a somewhat separate form of haunting. The legendary French editor and novelist Philippe Sollers, as rendered by Armine Kotin Mortimer, retraces here the history of the Louvre under its original director, Dominique Vivant. In his speculative fable, Len Berkman listens to the voice of a teenage Cordelia; elsewhere, in a work of speculative fiction, Jessi Lewis explores a very different form of female subjugation. Both Carol Moldaw, in a narrative poem, and Anamyn Turowski, in a poetic narrative, explore instances where what is past continues to return, overwhelming our present. All of which is not to say that action in the present won’t be the past/not past for each of our tomorrows. Surely Damali Abrams’s healing and reparative art is present action. Elsewhere, Ah Zi offers a truly chilling tale of digital surveillance and punishment, where a single message may have unending repercussions. Finally, in a meditation equal parts hope and fear, Eduardo Halfon reflects on why, and whether, fatherhood in the Abrahamic tradition begins with a knife. In our Summer issue, surely any or all of these, and others as well, will keep you glued to your perch. Definitely not dead. Not yet. Not even sleeping. [End Page 205] Copyright © 2022 The Massachusetts Review, Inc