Oh My! What Is That?: Strange Objects (Part I: Joy Williams’s “Congress”)
by Elizabeth Mayer
“The aim of literature,” Baskerville replied grandly, “is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.” —Donald Barthelme On the wide sill near the table in our foyer where I write (and eat meals and do art projects with my daughter and anything else that requires a flat surface), an abstract structure sits below the window. The base is a roughly cut rectangle of foam board, that light yet rigid backbone of middle…