Tag Archives: Spring 2015

Am I An African?

by D. M. Aderibigbe My uncle was happier that Saturday than other Saturdays, which were usually his happy days: they were the only days he never had to go to work or church; the only days he got to eat his favorite meal—pounded yam and egusi soup—all fashioned to the shape of his appetite with […]

I’m Very Into You: Correspondence 1995-1996

Kathy Acker and McKenzie Wark Edited by Matias Viegener Semiotext(e) ($13.95) by Spencer Dew Writing defies death in that “to work in this world and to matter,” as Kathy Acker put it, is to leave behind words that outlast the body, the corpse. This is not, of course, to say that writing somehow transcends the […]

Women Who Make a Fuss: The Unfaithful Daughters of Virginia Woolf

Isabelle Stengers and Vinciane Despret translated by April Knutson Univocal ($24.95) by Kelsey Irving Beson Women Who Make a Fuss: The Unfaithful Daughters of Virginia Woolf could be described as a “difficult” work, as problematic as that term is. The book, which takes its premise from Three Guineas, Woolf’s 1938 treatise on academia and the […]

The First Bad Man

Miranda July Scribner ($25) by Erin Lewenauer Encountering Miranda July’s art for the first time, whether through her films, stories, or voice, one feels the shock of being challenged and exposed. July now conquers a new creative form—the novel. The First Bad Man displays her strength and particular delicacy, echoing character qualities and themes that […]

Bombyonder

Reb Livingston Bitter Cherry ($15) by John Parras Ever since David Shields unsettled the distinction between fiction and nonfiction in his Reality Hunger, the novel has been in its newest state of siege. Will Self declared the genre dead in The Guardian, while William Deresiewicz, reviewing Michael Schmidt's biography of the novel in The Atlantic, […]

Family Furnishings: Selected Stories 1995-2014

Alice Munro Alfred A. Knopf ($30) by Keith Abbott Alice Munro’s fiction mostly takes place in Canadian towns rather than cities, and mostly between 1930 through 1960. Suburbs with their feeder freeways rarely show up or lead to metropolitan lives. Trains feature prominently, but often their stations have been removed to make room for bus […]

Lupa and Lamb

Susan Hawthorne Spinifex ($26.95) by Heather Taylor Johnson Empress Livia is having a party! While in Rome, her guests take in the sites. Curatrix suggests the Musaeum Matricum, which is “a place of the Muses/a musing place of the [f. pl.] Matrix/Mother/Source,” where she, as curator, has gathered the “lost texts.” These lost texts, places […]

Citizen: An American Lyric

Claudia Rankine Graywolf ($20) by J.G. McClure If you’re looking for proof of the urgent necessity of Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric, you might simply look to the cover. The image is of David Hammons’s In the Hood. The severed hood of a sweatshirt—empty, tattered, black—stands against a stark white background. The piece was […]

Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics

Marco Pasi translated by Ariel Godwin Routledge ($27.95) by Spencer Dew Here’s the sticky wicket with the Great Beast 666. On the one hand, Aleister Crowley shines as a star in the firmament of history, champion of individualism, gadfly to hypocrites, proto-punk provocateur and publicity-chasing prankster who donned the mantle of prophet to receive the […]