March 2008
Second Glance:
Playing Lotto with Wittgenstein
Since its publication in 2000, The Last Samurai has been defined, but not explained, as a “cult classic.” In this regular feature, Garth Risk Hallberg looks with fresh eyes at Helen DeWitt’s brilliant and jolting novel.
Green
Open Letters continues its serialization of Adam Golaski’s innovative translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with this, the third installment
One Encounter:
Thank You and Goodbye
In February, the great pianist Alfred Brendel gave his final performance in New York City. Greg Waldmann was in Carnegie Hall to see it and in this regular feature he shares the experience.
The Least Glamorous Spy
Today the name Mata Hari evokes a villainess in a James Bond movie. Yet, as Joanna Scutts discovers, if you wipe away the makeup from the myth, you uncover a far sadder and more complex tale.
Strangers to Ourselves
The premise of Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational is that all of us are a lot more irrational a lot more often than we thought; Steve Donoghue tries to determine if the inmates really are running the asylum
Debs
Two new novelists, Charles Bock and Andrew Foster Altschul, have paraded into the public eye with the help of ticker tape and noisemakers from their publishers. Sam Sacks takes the bait and looks to see if their novels merit the hubbub.
Untimely Meditations
In Diary of a Bad Year, J.M. Coetzee pushes his experimentations with the novel form farther than he ever has; Giles Harvey examines whether he’s enlarging the boundaries of fiction or simply leaving them behind
Peer Review:
The Opinions on “Strong Opinions”
A.I. White has burrowed into twenty-three reviews of J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year and in this regular feature alerts us to which critics succeeded in their charge, which failed, and why
where sky meets earth
A poem by Josely Vianna Baptista, translated by Chris Daniels, and featuring a drawing by Francisco Faria
At the Old Vic
A comprehensive new theater book, London Stage in the 20th Century, leads Honoria St. Cyr to reminisce on performances magnificent and disastrous staged in the world-famous West End
Proud Boy
Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey: commander, courtier, poet. In this installment of his “Year with the Tudors,” Steve Donoghue tells the story of how such an extraordinary young man fell foul of Henry VIII.
Found Family
Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys is an often funny and moving anthology about the varied relationships between women and gay men, although, as Tom Cardamone observes, the friendships featured tend only to represent the posher strata of gay America
Irreverence by Half-Measure
He makes tools; he uses fire; he caucuses with interest groups: this is Dana Milbank’s Homo Politicus. Greg Waldmann assesses Milbank’s field notes, wishing the taxonomist had been more exacting.
Thick-Coming Fancies
Susan Fraser King in her debut novel Lady Macbeth cries “Out, out!” to the blot on her main character’s reputation put there by Shakespeare; Finch Bronstein-Rasmussen seeks to determine if King’s efforts signify anything.
Absent Friends:
In Primordial Seas, They Glide
In this regular feature, Steve Donoghue dives deep into the work of James Russell Lowell, whose splendid writing lurks in the basins of bookstore bargain carts, too often passed over for the smaller fry
The OLM Quiz:
We Celebrate Ourselves
This is Open Letters’ one-year anniversary issue and we celebrate the joyous occasion with a quiz on all things related to us!
The Cover Photo for March comes to us from Kirsten Lewis, a documentary photographer based in Richmond, Virginia. She specializes in wedding, birth, maternity and commercial photography – please visit her at her website, Innate Photographics.
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