Tag Archives: spring 2004

Borderlines

Caroline Kraus Broadway Books ($23.95) By Holly Chase Williams Sometimes getting what you want is the worst thing that could happen to you. In this affecting memoir, San Francisco bookstore clerk Caroline Kraus wants more than anything to become important to a co-worker, the free-spirited and enchanting Jane. It's unfortunate that Caroline, bent on fleeing […]

The Road to Santiago

Kathryn Harrison National Geographic Press ($20) by John Toren Walking long distances on foot isn't easy. Neither is writing about it. Even the most compelling landscapes can only hold the reader's attention for so long, and the barking dogs, the missed turns of the path, the constant fatigue, and the dwindling water supplies become monotonous […]

The Fab One (in One Dimension and One Hundred)

The Lennon Companion: Twenty Five Years of Comment edited by Elizabeth Thomson and David Gutman Da Capo Press ($18.95) Lennon Legend: An Illustrated Life of John Lennon James Henke Chronicle Books ($40) by Steven Lee Beeber Joyce-inspired writer; heroin-drenched, black-cloaked troublemaker; self-appointed imaginary saint—John Lennon was all these things and more. Like Whitman's America, he […]

Feminine Persuasion: Art and Essays on Sexuality

Edited by Betsy Stirratt and Catherine Johnson Indiana University Press ($35) by Stacy Brix In 1953, the noted sexologist Alfred Kinsey published Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. The book confronted a culture that had centered its marketing on homemaking, marriage, and motherhood—all making way for the returning soldier—and revealed the realities of the feminine […]

Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia

Edited by Sandra L. Ballard and Patricia L. Hudson University of Kentucky Press ($45) by Lynnell Edwards If they had listened a little more closely, the folks at CBS might have not been so surprised last year at the outrage and bad publicity surrounding their proposed reality show "The Real Beverly Hillbillies." Frequently cited as […]

The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America: From Slave Passes to The War on Terror

Christian Parenti Basic Books ($24.95) by Jim Feast The pass that Brother Ezekiel had written read, This nigger is my slave. He has my consent to go to town. John Morris Dutton. — Margaret Walker, Jubilee In Margaret Walker's novel Jubilee, a tracing of Gone with the Wind themes from a subaltern perspective, the Georgia […]

Lost Splendor: The Amazing Memoirs of the Man Who Killed Rasputin

Prince Felix Youssoupoff Helen Marx Books ($21.95) by Rod Smith Let's be realistic. We're all born assassins—in our heads, at least. Who among us has never dreamt of sending some tyrannical mayor, mullah, president, or lifeguard to his or her grave, whether with bomb, bullet, blade or pure malevolent intent? Most of us, thank goodness, […]

Paul Bowles on Music

Edited by Timothy Mangan and Irene Herrmann University of California Press ($34.95) by Mark Terrill Though known primarily for his novels, stories and translations, Paul Bowles was also an accomplished composer and widely published music critic. An intimate of Aaron Copland and protégé of Virgil Thomson, Bowles first met Thomson in Paris in 1931, when […]

Juniper Fuse: Upper Paleolithic Imagination & The Construction of the Underworld

Clayton Eshleman Wesleyan University Press ($29.95) by Sarah Fox In his 1981 collection of poems Our Lady of the Three Pronged Devil, Clayton Eshleman concludes his introduction with the following: As species disappear, the Paleolithic grows more vivid. As living animals disappear, the first outlines become dear, not as reflections of a day world, but […]

Detroit Tales

Jim Ray Daniels Michigan State University Press ($22.95) by Dustin Michael Close to the beginning of "A Fistful of Yen," the sprawling goofball chop-socky spoof in the messy 1977 cult favorite The Kentucky Fried Movie, the evil kung-fu warlord is doling out punishments to his captives. A ragged man in chains is dragged from the […]