SPUTNIK SWEETHEARTHaruki Murakami translated by Philip Gabriel Knopf ($23) by Matt Dube Haruki Murakami's latest novel, Sputnik Sweetheart, tells the story of two would-be lovers. Sumire, a frustrated novelist and college dropout, meets the thirty-something Miu at a wedding reception, and falls immediately in love with the older woman. When Miu offers Sumire a job […]
LOUISE IN LOVE Grove Press ($13) THE DOWNSTREAM EXTREMITY OF THE ISLE OF SWANS University of Georgia ($15.95) by Bonnie Blader Any single short discussion of Mary Jo Bang's two new books, both published in the Spring of 2001, will only scratch their rich surfaces. Bang deploys her own signature language of perspective, using it […]
Raymond Federman Starcherone Books ($9) by Rebecca Weaver The particular story of Raymond Federman's The Voice in the Closet cannot be told conventionally. Originally part of his third novel The Twofold Vibration, this book was excerpted by request of Indiana University Press, who called the section "unreadable." It's fortunate that Federman found another home for […]
Raymond Federman Green Integer ($11.95) by Lance Olsen Raymond Federman—arguably one of the most important innovative writers working (primarily) in English of the last third of the 20th century—began what he would consider his best novel, The Twofold Vibration, in 1976 and completed it in 1981. The hybrid result is, among other things, part experimental […]
PARADISE HOTEL AND OTHER PLAYS Richard Foreman The Overlook Press ($29.95) RICHARD FOREMAN edited by Gerald Rabkin Johns Hopkins University Press ($19.95) by Aaron Kunin The subject says to the object: "I destroyed you," and the object is there to receive the communication. From now on the subject says: "Hullo object!" "I destroyed you." "I […]
by Jeremy Smith RED MARS, BLUE MARS, GREEN MARS Kim Stanley Robinson Bantam Books ($7.19) Staring at the screensaver on my computer—an image of stars flying past as though the viewer were on a starship traveling faster than light—it hit me that human […]
by Rudi Dornemann and Kelly Everding Neil Gaiman's writing career began in journalism, that most reality-oriented of approaches to the word. He first made a name for himself in comics, a genre that isn't usually connected all that closely to reality. But Gaiman's writing blends and balances things that aren't ordinarily combined: reality and fantasy, […]
by Graham Foust Joe Wenderoth is the author of two highly acclaimed collections of poetry, Disfortune and It Is If I Speak, but it's his latest book, Letters to Wendy's, that's in the news. Wenderoth wrote this book on comment cards from Wendy's restaurant, and in that seemingly unimaginative space, where most people write complaints […]