Granta - The Magazine of New Writing 140, Autumn 2017 [antikvár]

Introduction What's in a state of mind? How do we describe emotions, or the complex relationship between individuals and the state? What did Barry Lopez feel about diving under the ice in Antarctica? What caused the seemingly telepathic communication between Siri Hustvedt and her husband, Paul Auster? What happened in Max Porter's therapy session with his brother? Those are some of the short pieces in this issue - we titled the series 'State of Mind', and asked a number of writers to contribute. There are sadder moments too, some more elusive than others. Mary Ruefle thinks of names; Marcel Proust longs for silence; Margo Jefferson resists her inner voice whispering defeatist messages; Andrew Solomon meditates on gay identity and depression; and Han Kang describes her baby sister, who was born prematurely, and died long before Kang was born: 'a girl, with a face as white as a crescent-moon rice cake.' Our lead piece, 'Notes on a Suicide', by Rana Dasgupta, delves into the mystery of Oceane, the young Frenchwoman from the outskirts of Paris, Pohsh-Turkish by origin, who live-streamed her suicide on Periscope, a social media platform. Who was Oceane, and what can her life and death tell us about the state of France? She was nineteen when she died - a girl of some talent who had imbibed the ennui of the French cultural tradition; a girl estranged from her father; a girl who had been beaten and raped by a former boyfriend. For Oceane, that act of violence was too much - she had, it seems, nothing left to bind her to this world. But her pubhc act of self-destruction was also aligned with the culmral logic of the environment she lived in, the banheues, a space of male violence and petty degradations, of youth unemployment, graffiti and tattoos. And add to this the virmal world, a new dimension distorting and enhancing reality; add, too, ancient cults of death merging with the cult of celebrity, and the act of Oceane - who is still there, onYouTube, pink hearts floating up from the bottom of the screen as she speaks, cigarette in hand - begins to make a dismrbing kind of sense.