In the Spotlight
Latest Stories
View AllReviews
The Typescript
A quietly funny and rather bleak academic satire. The colleagues’ affectionate reminiscences are undercut by everything they carefully avoid saying—his refusal to teach, lack of publications, and the university’s elaborate indulgence of him—so the discovery in the safe feels like a perfect final deflation. The plastic leopard, pop-up book, cartoon, and empty grappa bottles are wonderfully specific comic details, suggesting that the grand translation may have existed more in institutional fantasy than anywhere else. I also liked how the story builds anticipation around the safe without overexplaining the punchline. The ending is deliberately abrupt, though, and leaves the emotional consequences of Charles’s stroke and the fate of the department mostly unexplored; a little more aftermath might have given the satire additional weight.
Adrian Chen