July 2009
‘May Your BlackBerry Rot in Hell’
Brilliant novelist/amateur crank Mark Helprin despairs of your online thievery, and Esther Schell despairs of his new book, Digital Barbarism.
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Glory at Half Price Larry Tye has written a book about the greatest, longest baseball career to date; Brad Jones benches the Babe and tallies up Satchel. |
The Cast Iron of the Years
An excerpt from a poem by Tristan Tzara, translated by Heather Green
| Who the Hell’s Lili St. Cyr? Carl Van Doren called her “the princess who takes off her pants,” but who was Gypsy Rose Lee, really? Kindly let Michael Adams entertain you in looking at two recent biographies. |
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Mystery Balls
Flotsam and jetsam clutter Javier Calvo’s novel Wonderful World, but do they choke its flow? Lianne Habinek, our steadfast guide, charts its course.
| Marimo Balls, Midnight Sun, and the Water of Life Quick: What’s Iceland like? Faint idea? Marc Vincenz reassures—your knowledge of Japan will do just fine. |
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Bejabbers! That famous vein of gold (well, mostly silver) made American millionaires, awful tragedies, and Mark Twain. Eli Wanamaker’s literary quarry is Dennis Drabelle’s Mile-High Fever. |
It’s a Mystery:
“She has a bag full of gold just like Pippi Longstocking”
They’re back! Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played with Fire marks the return of Mikael Blomkvist, the intrepid investigative journalist, and his sidekick Lisbeth Salander, the world-class punk hacker. Irma Heldman is on their trail.
| How Could You Stop Loving Me? Adam Golaski grew up reading Jay McInerney and wanting to walk in his shoes. In How It Ended, those soles are a little scuffed. |
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Wishing on a Star (Wars) “It’s an energy field that connects us all” Obi-wan Kenobi has told us, and Phillip Lobo attests to the truth of it in his preview of the latest Star Wars MMO. |
Little Frozen Yogurt Shop of Horrors
The bowling alleys and corner stores of Jim Krusoe’s middle America are the source of oddities beyond imagining—until you’ve read Sharon Fulton’s review of his novels, that is.
| Classics Illustrated An affection for annotated classics and an abiding love for The Wind in the Willows makes Honoria St. Cyr singularly suited to review the new annotated edition of Kenneth Grahame’s classic, edited by Seth Lerer—she shares her discoveries here. |
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Miss Hamilton Disposes
Bryn Mawr’s deaconess Edith Hamilton and Catullus, the bard of Rome’s underbelly, would seem to have little in common. Steve Donoghue brokers a meeting in the latest “Year with the Romans.”
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In Praise of Snobbery Great Britain has finally made a woman poet laureate—and she’s a lesbian no less. As Bryn Haworth reports, when she’s isn’t writing about the Royals, she’s plenty worthy of the honor. Since writing about the Royals is one of the job’s few requirements, what changes might we expect from the post? |
The Music of the Mind
Aleksandar Hemon’s prose has scarcely been mentioned without the accompanying adjective ‘Nabokovian’; John Madera looks at Hemon’s new collection of stories Love and Obstacles to see whether the modifier fits.
Family Through Fiction
In The Enchantress of Florence, Salman Rushdie has written his most Melvillean novel. John G. Rodwan, Jr. indulges in some Melvillean digressions as he explains just exactly what that means.
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That Old Bryn Mawr Accent Their cinematic pairings are the stuff of movie legend, but do their movies stand the test of time? Sarah Hudson takes in the films of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. |
‘… to ourselves and our posterity …’
Richard Beeman, in his Plain, Honest Men, reminds us that the Founding Fathers weren’t demigods. Thomas J. Daly measures their feet of clay.
Jeffrey Eaton and is a fundraiser and amateur photographer living in Washington, DC. “Looking Back on Scotland” was taken on his recent honeymoon to the Isle of Skye. His essay, “Raging Bull,” appeared in Open Letters Monthly, November 2008.
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