Roma

Editor's Note

With the no. 25 issue, Freaks and Outlaws, the PLURAL collection embarks on a new, semestrial series, donning a new design and proposing more exciting themes. Our aim, though, remains the same: to reinstate the connection, and at the same time highlight the connections,

Sexinesses

At first sight, nothing could be more reasonable or understandable than the illustration of the present issue of PLURAL. As the texts spin around the sexual obsession in Romanian literature, running from Creanga`s licentious Tale of All Tales to Agopian and Aldulescu`s swank,

Eros And Thanatos In Polynesia

It so happened that I lived for a while in Polynesia, and this extends the story up to the Antipodes. I had recently come back from the countries of the South Pacific, from the Polynesian islands. I was bringing with me the brain tomographies of a Maori minister, the file

Why Does The Child Boil In Polenta?

excerpts Now I'm working in the variety show. At the beginning, I danced with the other women. My appearances grew more and more frequent, and Pepita gradually pushed me to the front.  THE BODY – that's how I'm advertised on the billboards, life-size,

Dying Agata

Chapter SixIt's barely after midnight. Door number 415 opens. I get out and the door remains unlocked, wide open even, behind me. There is no one at this late hour to hear me and even if it were, why should I be afraid when I look like a leaving visitor, and not like

Literary Subtlety And Challenge. A Wannabe Preface To A Remarkable Debut

Some of the readers of this book may very well not go beyond the first part. Actually, they may not go through with their reading at all. Despite the efforts of our predecessors, from Conachi and Negruzzi to Creanga, from Rebreanu to Bogza and young Eliade, joined, after

Registration Record

excerpt 02/01/1980I am reading something by W. Faulkner, which lives among dusty shelves, with a tidy certitude; that certitude divorced reality a long time ago, quietly depleting, like a breeze of air when it sees injustice taking hold… and I now believe that this is

New Literary Sincerity

It was not easy for Romanian literature to evolve up to Ioana Bradea's novel, to its so provokingly violent title (itself a sophisticated, impudent blend of meanings and connotations as long as the dictionary designates just one object: a pipe)! And to think that once

Pipe Ass

excerpts Friday EveningGood evening. I am Andreea. Maybe I don't give a fuck about who you are. Ok, I was trying to be polite; I'd like to know whom I'm talking to. Listen, sweetheart, cut the crap, say eiteen. I beg your pardon?Eiteen! Say eiteen, what the

Cheese Country

SeptemberexcerptsIlie only looked me up in early September, a few weeks before the harvesting of the vineyards. He had come back alone, by train. He had told some lie to his wife and run over to see me. He was coming towards me with an enamored look in his eyes, ready to

Exuviae

excerpt I was to deal with this vague feeling, this bizarre, somewhat abstract and pure love three times during my teenage years. I had come into this huge and empty room, lured by some strange music that I always found irresistible, insinuating, intoxicating and dangerous.

Quote

N. Manolescu promised somewhere an inventory of places where the characters in Romanian literature make love. The critic was surprised by the parsimonious frequentation of the conjugal bed, and the preference for more bucolic spots: the oven, the meadow, the haystack…