If you can’t get to a newsstand, here’s what the opening spread of the Gray’s story looks like on an iPad.
The painting is by Alberto Rey and—in case you were hoping to add it to your collection—is already owned by the University of Virginia.
The story itself is set in Mexico and Montana. Although it’s absolutely fiction, the narrative roughly chronicles the puzzlement I feel both when stalking bonefish on the flats and trying to understand the so-called new economy. (Remember Touch America?)
My contribution to Songs of Ourselves, on the other hand, feels like a big departure from my usual work. Subtitled America’s Interior Landscape, the book wants to identify an idea that I’ve been searching for from Morocco to Mongolia: “the thing that makes us American.” As I was telling my sister today, my bit—which I called “The Journal of Infectious Diseases”—is “basically a memoir in the form of a collage.”
According to the Journal of Infectious Diseases, the most common reason for travel among tourists who contract cholera is—you guessed it—a visit with the relatives.
