Tag Archives: fall 2002

Soutine Impacted: an essay-review

by Clayton Eshleman I saw my first Soutine in 1963 in the Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki, Japan. It is now identified as "Hanging Duck," painted around 1925. Seeing this "thing" was so riveting that I remember nothing else in the museum. It was a hybrid fusion, at once a flayed man hung from a […]

Yes Yoko Ono

Alexandra Munroe with Jon Hendricks Japan Society / Harry N. Abrams, Inc. ($39.95) by Gary Gach Trying to pin down Yoko Ono can be like infiltrating North Korea using Boy Scouts for Phalangists. To some, she stole John Lennon away from the Beatles (a stereotypical, entrenched definition of women in terms of men). For others, […]

The Far Side of Nowhere

Nelson Bond Arkham House ($34.95) by Alan Deniro Perhaps there are two types of writers in the world: those who write for the now and those who create for posterity—paraphrasing Baudelaire, the times imprinted on the senses instead of time. Nelson Bond clearly falls in the former category. The Far Side of Nowhere is a […]

The Height and Depth of Everything

Katherine Haake University of Nevada Press ($17) by Sheila Squillante In "Arrow Math," the opening story of Katherine Haake's The Height and Depth of Everything, the narrator tells us she is "big these days on frameworks, any kind of structure, the smallest degree of order by which to contain the chaos that has taken over." […]

Martylove

Gary Waterman Dewi Lewis Publishing ($13.95) by Jessica Hoffmann Treatment Marty Moreno, erstwhile king of the sappy-sexy-love-song corner of pop music, is burning through a two million dollar advance and his last shreds of self-respect in a Malibu mansion full of out-of-date costumes, fan mail, and assorted abusable substances. While Marty sinks, Jane Miller ascends: […]

Melymbrosia

Virginia Woolf Edited with an introduction by Louise DeSalvo Cleis Press ($24.95) by Charisse Gendron In the 1980s, scholar Louise DeSalvo's book Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work almost single-handedly reoriented the direction of Woolf studies in America. DeSalvo's discovery in Woolf's writings of motifs common to the […]

Girl Imagined by Chance

Lance Olsen FC2 ($13.95) by Rochelle Ratner Far too little literature has focused on couples who consciously elect to remain childless. Until the 1990s, the subject was basically taboo, in conversation as well as the printed word. Or, especially when a male writer approached the subject, as Edward Albee did in Who's Afraid of Virginia […]

Summerland

Michael Chabon Hyperion ($22.95) by Stephen E. Abbott Chabon's first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, though noticeably constrained by youthful inexperience and the gimcrackery of MFA rote, nonetheless held enfolded within its pages the flicker of something wonderful yet to be. Wonderboys, Chabon's second novel, born out of a five-and-a-half-year effort writing a never-published, over […]

Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee

James Tate Verse Press ($23) by Melissa Maerz Beep: The word worries the electrical engineer. Lately, whenever he greets his coworker Skip, the latter man greets him with the onomatopoeic outburst. Never how are you? or good morning or even just a nice little hello. It's beep-or sometimes zow, or when things are really bad, […]

Consider the Eel

Richard Schweid University of North Carolina Press ($24.95) by Allison Slavick Pity the poor American who shuns the eel as a savory meal or snack. Eels—both the adults, which may be fried, boiled, or smoked or prepared in a mish-mash of other regional dishes, and the immature elver stage—are enjoyed throughout Europe and Asia where […]