December 2007
Green
Open Letters presents the first of many installments of Adam Golaski’s innovative new translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a serialization.
Denying Absurdity
The bestselling New Atheists presume that a simple faith in reason will make short work of the longing for God. David G. Moser takes them to task for what Nietzsche would have called their “complacent rationality.”
Descent
A poem by Clayton Eshleman
Second Glance:
Marilynne Robinson’s Psalms and Prophecy
This month our regular feature is devoted to a study of the small but potent canon of Marilynne Robinson. Sam Sacks dives back into her famous fiction and formidable essays.
Proper Red Stuff
There was no popular conception of the serial killer in Victorian England in 1888. Jack the Ripper was self-made man, and, as Steve Donoghue writes, no one knows who he was.
Two From No Tell Books
Jeffrey Eaton absorbs himself in the weirdly familiar and the familiarly weird worlds of Shafer Hall’s Never Cry Woof and PF Potvin’s The Attention Lesson.
The Uncertainty Principle
Joanna Scutts reviews Soldier’s Heart by West Point professor Elizabeth D. Samet, whose memoir accomplishes the impressive feat of finding common ground between Army officers and English majors.
Whispers Through the Curtain
For fifteen years a British and a Soviet family built a friendship by slipping letters past KGB censors. Karen Vanuska celebrates From Newbury with Love, a collection of their rich correspondence.
The Latest from Yasnaya Polyana
With so many versions of War and Peace to choose from, is there anything that new translators can do to set themselves apart? Yes, says Steve Donoghue, they can make old mistakes.
The Right Man for the Job
Does Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason really tell us anything we didn’t already know about our dying national dialogue? Greg Waldmann’s answer is yes.
Landfall at Last
It was a long wait, but, as Panagiotis Polichronakis reports, The Landmark Herodotus is finally here in all its definitive glory.
Proper Read Stuff
Fed up with the abuses of book reviewers, Gail Pool in her book Faint Praise advises editors to supply freelancers with a list of writing guidelines they would have to sign and abide by. Steve Donoghue isn’t quite ready to put his name on the dotted line.
The Open Letters Quiz:
Bah Humbug!
Misery loves company in our surliest, grinchiest quiz yet.
December’s cover photo, “Northern Lights,” comes to us from Christer Mattson in Turku, Finland. More of Christer’s work can be seen at his flickr gallery at http://flickr.com/photos/cricce/
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