Zander Brietzke University of Alabama Press ($39.95) by Justin Maxwell This strong critical work by Columbia University Professor Zander Brietzke comprehensively and concretely parses out the idiomatic values of drama and film to show the former’s continued relevance in modern culture, while honoring the latter. Brietzke’s prose conveys his complex ideas in an articulate, accessible […]
Peter Thomson Oxford University Press ($29.95) by Eliza Murphy “Yikes!” is evidently an insufficient response to discovering that the deepest lake in the world, known also to be the purest, is undergoing alarming biochemical shifts in response to human activities. Perhaps “Bloody Hell” will suffice. This is Siberia after all, the nether regions of Russia, […]
Robert D. Romanyshyn Spring Journal Books ($24.95) by Joel Weishaus In a 2005 interview with Dolores E. Brien, Robert Romanyshyn said: “As a phenomenologist, I start with the notion that soul reveals and conceals itself in and through the landscapes of experience we build individually and collectively. A person says whom he or she is, […]
Alexandra Fuller Penguin ($23.95) by Kevin Carollo “There is a magic place . . . ” —TV ad for Wyoming tourism Alexandra Fuller’s third nonfiction work tells the story of a young man who grew up, lived, and suddenly died on the oil patch in western Wyoming. The British-born, Rhodesian/Zimbabwean-raised author of the fine memoirs Don’t […]
Richard Bruce Nugent Da Capo Press ($18) by Douglas Messerli If you prefer the pious potboilers of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker to the irreverent interrogations of Amiri Baraka and Ishmael Reed, better skip Richard Bruce Nugent’s Gentlemen Jigger, a fiction—written in the 1930s, but published here for the first time—which even in its title hints […]
Philip K. Dick Tor ($25.95 ) by Ryder W. Miller Before Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) became a successful science fiction writer, he wrote realistic fiction, penning titles such as Humpty Dumpty in Oakland and Voices from the Street. Now, as these books appear in the wake of his literary and cinematic rebirth, one can see what he was […]
Olivier Rolin translated by Jane Kuntz Dalkey Archive ($12.95) by Levi Teal One enters Olivier Rolin’s Hotel Crystal through a narrow door with a brass knob, which rests loosely in its housing and will not turn until jiggled. Once inside, readers will find thick green shag underfoot that swallows the sound of their passing. The plot is […]
Leon de Winter Translated by Arnold and Erica Pomerans Toby Press ($14.95) by Kevin Carollo “Now what do you want to know?” asks the gatekeeper. “You are insatiable.” —Franz Kafka, The Trial There is only one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. To judge whether life is or is not worth living is to […]
Jerome Charyn W. W. Norton ($25.95) by T. K. Dalton Jerome Charyn's new novel, Johnny One-Eye, is a picaresque set in Manhattan during the American Revolution. The eponymous hero was born in a brothel run by his mother, Gertrude. His patrilineage is unclear, but may include the taciturn, red-headed giant, George Washington. For the duration of […]
Dorothea Dieckmann translated by Tim Mohr Soft Skull Press ($14) by Spencer Dew Guantanamo chronicles the transformation of Rashid, a German who, while vacationing in South Asia, is arrested and shipped to America’s most famous detention facility. In this alien world of outdoor cages and grueling, imposed rhythms, subjected to the excruciating pain of torture and […]