Contributors

Max Frisch
Contributor History
Biography
Max Frisch (1911–1991) was one of the preeminent literary voices of postwar twentieth-century Europe. In a style that mingled irony with lyricism, he explored the nature of identity and issues of moral responsibility, both individual and collective. Born in Zürich, he traveled widely, living in Switzerland, Rome, Berlin, and New York. His novels include I’m Not Stiller (1954), Homo Faber (1957), and Man in the Holocene (1980), which The New York Times called “a luminous parable” and “a masterpiece.” His plays include The Firebugs (1958) and Andorra (1961). Max Frisch’s journal from his military service in the Swiss Army, Blätter aus dem Brotsack or Pages from My Knapsack (1940), was his first published book of nonfiction. Two other journals, Sketchbook 1946–1949 and Sketchbook 1964–1971, appeared during his lifetime.

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In Print

Vol. 80
Conjunctions:80
Ways of Water
Spring 2023
Edited by Bradford Morrow

Online

Zoop
by Jess Arndt
May 31, 2023
Ice worms first start communing with me in Forlandsundet, a miles-deep sound north of the Greenland Sea. I don’t speak Norwegian, but I can parse: For. Land. Sun. It’s completely black outside. Det means “that or it.” Det, that’s easy, I’ve been one all my life.

The KV Svalbard is an icebreaker. From the foredeck, the rocky screes sweeping west are the planet’s emptiest place. No one between us and the North Pole.

“Det,” I hear, “Oi Det.” I can’t locate the strange, oblong voice, more of a nose whistle. Near me? but not inside me. I soon give up.
Rainmaking
by Lindsey Drager
May 24, 2023
Of course the book she writes—the lesser book, the book about nothing—becomes a popular text, one that readers adore. When they ask her what she will write next, she says she is going to write the book over. Over? they ask her.
       Again, she says. She isn’t really a writer, she tells them, she’s a transcriber. She transcribes stories.
       Across languages? they ask.
       No, she says. That would be translation. I used to do that but stopped, she says. Now I transcribe. I take texts and transcribe them into another version of the same language.
       So you rewrite, they say.
       No, she says. You’ll see.
The Wave Readers
by Kristin Posehn
May 18, 2023
For thousands of years, the peoples of the Marshall Islands have entertained a bustling interisland travel by canoe and small sailing craft without any of the tools—compass, sextant, nautical charts, and, these days, GPS—on which the rest of the world has depended. Within a purely oral tradition, Marshallese navigators developed a highly refined system of voyaging, relying entirely on their senses to decipher the subtlest of codes in the aqueous environment. Theirs has always been a world of waves.