Tag Archives: spring 2001

THE ADVERSARY: A True Story of Monstrous Deception

Emmanuel Carrère Metropolitan Books ($22) by Josie Rawson Monstrous, indeed. Among us there are the petty impostors: small-time sharks, little white liars. We all know them, or are them—little harm done. And then there are the monstrous frauds, the epic deceivers who author autobiographies so outrageous they change history. These figures are legion among gurus […]

NARROW ROAD TO THE DEEP NORTH

Katherine McNamara Mercury House ($15.95) by Jason Fischbach In 1976, a young poet disgruntled with the anthropologists, both living and dead, of Western academia, went North in search of living culture. As the author says in the early chapters of her book: "I needed to know about living people: what they are, wore, thought, said; […]

FROM DAWN TO DECADENCE: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the present

Jacques Barzun Harper Collins ($36) by Eric Iannelli Encyclopaedic in scope, engaging but demanding in its account, From Dawn to Decadence is a brilliant synthesis of five centuries of cultural development from the keen mind of Jacques Barzun, a highly respected critic and historian with nearly thirty books to his credit. Beginning with the a look at […]

TRANSLATING THE UNSPEAKABLE: Poetry and the Innovative Necessity

Kathleen Fraser University of Alabama Press ($19.95) by Charles Alexander Kathleen Fraser takes the poem as space of revelation. This is the self. This is reality. Not clear. Not even repeatable, paraphrasable. The poem translates the unspeakable by bringing it into language while leaving it unspeakable. Robert Grenier in 1972 wrote "I HATE SPEECH," against the […]

SIXTY YEARS OF ARKHAM HOUSE

compiled by S. T. Joshi Arkham House Publishers, Inc. ($25.95) by Kris Lawson Unless you're a fan of horror and weird fiction, or a devotee of small presses, you're not likely to have heard of Arkham House. Founded in 1939, Arkham House has published nearly 200 books of fiction and poetry. Sixty Years of Arkham House, […]

NOT A CHANCE

Jessica Treat FC2 ($12.95) by Rebecca Weaver Not a Chance, Jessica Treat's second collection of fictions, is catapulted by its characters. These off-kilter characters constantly blur the lines between imagination/reality and sanity/insanity because they are rendered with amazing accuracy, detail, and even compassion. Many of Treat's characters aren't aware of the world around them—or of […]

THE FOX FROM UP ABOVE AND THE FOX FROM DOWN BELOW

Jose Maria Arguedas Translated by Frances Horning Barraclough University of Pittsburgh Press ($19.95) by Peter Ritter The Peruvian writer José María Arguedas shot himself in the head on November 29, 1969 in his office at the Agrarian University in La Molina. Ever considerate, he planned his death so that it would not disrupt the university's […]

HEAD

William Tester Sarabande Books ($19.95) by Kelly Everding Whether you're stuck in your own head, trying to get into someone else's head, losing your maidenhead, or aspiring to godhead, William Tester's Head will speak to the particular condition of self-consciousness unique to humanity. In a language that twists the vernacular into a lyrical condensation of image and […]

THE HOUSE OF GENTLE MEN

Kathy Hepinstall Avon Books ($13) by Kiersten Marek Margaret Atwood has described a moment in high school as she crossed a football field when a "large invisible thumb" pressed down on her head and granted her a poem, a "sinister" and beautiful gift. Atwood's keen sense of the mysterious process of writing made me wonder […]

LIBERTY'S EXCESS

Lidia Yuknavitch FC2 ($12.95) by Jeremy Russell Reading Lidia Yuknavitch is like watching someone marking a map of America with black dots on all the toxic waste dump sites. You aren't quite sure how she knew to mark those particular spots, but know only that her aim is unerring. And with each successive denotation, the […]