June 2009

The Fiction Issue

San Francisco: 1972 An excerpt from Edmund White’s forthcoming memoir City Boy No Hugging, No Learning Colson Whitehead, one of our most intellectually satisfying writers, has written a “novel” that meanders suspiciously like a memoir. Sam Sacks reviews Sag Harbor. Second Glance: Wave and Say Hello to Frances She was a bestseller in her day, now virtually unknown. Fanny Burney, and her great novel Evelina, gets some long-deserved attention from Tracey Kelly. Notes from a Crritic John Goodman, John Glover, and Nathan Lane are currently starring on Broadway in Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece; Andrew Martin’s got an aisle seat, and reports back on a surprisingly sunny Waiting for Godot.

_____________________A Fiction Portfolio____________________________________________

Viaticum
A short story by Lauren Groff

Queen Hereafter
A excerpt from Susan Fraser King’s forthcoming novel about Margaret of Scotland

Ocean
A short story by Sergio De La Pava

Ma
An excerpt from Elinor Lipman’s novel The Family Man

Yellow
A short story by Sage Marsters

The Giants Hit the Road
An excerpt from Steve Kluger’s novel Last Days of Summer
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Second Glance: The Prince of the Powers of the Air Anthony Burgess is famous, but not for his best book. John Cotter sees your A Clockwork Orange and raises you Earthly Powers.

A Year with the Romans: Supping with Glaucus Steve Donoghue takes the emperor’s box to thumbs-up or thumbs-down an array of Roman historical novels, as “A Year with the Romans” continues.

Second Glance:
He Hears Them Speaking
You may have passed over Frederick Busch’s many novels on bookstore shelves; Brad Jones convinces you to stop and read the words.

Stillbourne Eric van Lustbader throws every cliche in the kitchen into Robert Ludlum’s endless Bourne saga, attempting to keep the pot boiling. Greg Waldmann tastes the stew.

Reader, I Disemboweled Him
Intrepid reporter Deirdre Crimmins tackles that last literary taboo: Regency zombies.

Delightful Gumbo or Strange Brew? Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck displays a long list of literary influences; John Madera asks what these well-made stories have to say.

A Fiction
A poem by Shafer Hall

It’s a Mystery:
“You can change your name … your job description … But really, nothing changes”
With The Tourist, Olen Steinhauer takes his place in the panoply of classic spy fiction—at the very top with Deighton, Greene, and Le Carré. Irma Heldman is on the inside and tells all.

May the Horse Be with Him Before Arthas was a character in a new novel, he was a character in a video game (World of Warcraft, naturally) - which makes him fair game for our gaming expert, Phillip A. Lobo.

Upstate John Cheever’s cocktail parties may be gone, but the Library of America has punched up their commuter ticket with a new Collected Stories and Other Writings. That’s Christen Enos in the club car.

Murder on the Fractureline
China Mieville’s latest book features two cities nervously co-existing in the same space. Khalid Ponte looks at both sides now.

Uppity Blues Master of the mannered sneak-attack, Kazuo Ishiguro has enraptured readers for years - including Karen Vanuska, who walks us through Nocturnes, his new collection of linked stories. This Book Will Shoot You Shifting from a Vietnam epic, newly-minted National Book Award winner Denis Johnson goes noir in Nobody Move; John Matthew Fox leads us down these new mean streets. Not a Boating Accident It wouldn’t be summer without a giant killer shark novel, so Steve Donoghue goes for a fun swim with the, er, mother of them all, Meg: Hell’s Aquarium. Joseph Conrad’s Tragic Predicament “A sorry business this scribbling,” Joseph Conrad once confessed, and we remember him problematically. John G. Rodwan, Jr. reappraises the murky nature of his books.

This month’s cover photo comes to us from Chris Marstall. Marstall lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is the creator of tourfilter.com. Visit psychoastronomy.org for more of his shots.

The illustrations of Samuel Beckett and Joseph Conrad are by Rachel Burgess, of Brookline, Massachusetts. She has a B.A. in Literature from Yale University and an M.F.A. in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts. Her work can be viewed at www.rachelsillustrations.com.

May 2009

The Empire Strikes Back?
Edward Lucas, in The New Cold War, puts a modern face on the hoary geopolitical struggle between the Russian bear and the American eagle. Greg Waldmann sorts the players and evaluates the stakes.

Grovely! Grovely! Grovely! And all Grovely! The late Roger Deakin celebrates his beloved trees one last time in Wildwood, and Bryn Haworth gladly finds himself within a dark forest.

The Crowing of Corncrakes The Decemberists seem benign enough, but their songs are blood-dimmed with rape, drownings, and even cannibalism. The body count rises on their new release The Hazards of Love, but Lianne Habinek also discovers fresh wellsprings of feeling.

Doubling Up On a Pair of Losers Jerry Siegel and Miguel Cervantes: each created an immortal literary character (Superman and Don Quixote, of course), but what else could they possibly have in common? Taking his cue from Gerard Jones’ Men of Tomorrow, Robert Latona says: more than you think.

Strange New Worlds J.J. Abrams’ long-awaited Star Trek reboot has hit theaters, and Steve Donoghue looks into whether it carries on a proud legacy, or else overturns it.

Rom Zom Com Exiled to the basement, pelted with garbage, and unlucky in love: zombies have it rough in S.G. Browne’s new novel Breathers. Dierdre Crimmins lends a sympathetic ear (figuratively, of course).

Ten Questions for Sarah Ruden
Sarah Ruden, the latest and greatest translator of Vergil’s Aeneid, offers a funny and fascinating glimpse inside the classicist’s world in this Open Letters interview.

It’s a Mystery: ‘Ah, what the stage lost when I opted for the police’ Donna Leon’s eighteenth Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery About Face has Irma Heldman once again seduced by the witty, erudite Venetian cop with a passion for ancient philosophers, modern women, elegant food, and the constant need to make sense out of the often senseless law.

Postal Worker? Poodle?
Poet’s poet Lyn Hejinian has turned poet’s novelist in Lola, half of her new collection Saga/Circus. John Cotter circles its sagacity.

from Moving Day
Poetry by Maureen Thorson

Last Train for the Coast
The advent of the CD threw the retail music business into a disarray from which it hasn’t recovered. Brad Jones, a veteran of that disarray, reads Steve Knopper’s account of the industry’s Appetite for Self-Destruction.

Joshua Redman Makes His Move Joshua Redman’s new album Compass makes some daring allusions to the all-time titans of jazz; John G. Rodwan, Jr. listens to hear how Redman borrows from those pastmasters and how he departs from them.

Roots Into Entrails
A Nazi picaresque wouldn’t seem to be a likely read, but Karen Vanuska reviews a new reprint of Jakov Lind’s 1962 World War II novel Landscape in Concrete and finds its grim, absurd power undimmed by the years.

Trouble Shooting You’d think any brand of movie that could produce Super Mario Bros. would have no advocates left, but you’d be wrong! Our gaming expert Phillip A. Lobo diagnoses the problem to date and charts a new path for video game movies.

Uncle Livy
Steve Donoghue’s “Year with the Romans” turns its eye upon Titus Livius, who either wrote poetical history or historical poetry, depending on who you ask.

Son Retour? In 1911, the unthinkable happened: the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre. R. A. Scotti tells the story in The Vanished Smile, and Jan van Doop has some ideas of his own.

Grace
Jeff Buckley’s famous father and early death insured him a cult status in the pop culture pantheon. Nivedita Gunturi uncovers the music behind the myths.

Lightning Strikes and Pen Strokes Veteran comics illustrator David Mazzucchelli takes center stage writing and drawing his first full-length graphic novel, Asterios Polyp, and Sharon Fulton takes a look at the result.

Second Glance:
‘Do Not, Future People, Bring Up a Child the Wrong Way’
The Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, was compiled in the early 19th century from a much older oral tradition—can it possibly have anything to teach the modern reader? Sean Hughes has some surprising answers.

This month’s cover photo, of the April 2009 eruption of La Cumbre Volcano on Isla Fernandina in the Galapagos Islands, was taken by Joe Sacks, of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts

April 2009

Before Nightfall
Just as we approach the time when there will be no more living witnesses to the Second World War, Richard Evans concludes his monumental three-volume Nazi history with The Third Reich at War. Steve Donoghue makes record of the results.

A Deadly Serious Kind of Farce Rare indeed these days for mention of Iran to provoke smiles—and so Iraj Perezkzad’s beloved farce My Uncle Napoleon gains new relevance. Bryn Haworth takes a fresh look at an old friend.

Cue Chaos
Oprah favorite Wally Lamb has co-opted the Columbine shootings, the Iraq war, and Hurricane Katrina for his latest bestseller, The Hour I First Believed. Julie McGinley directs a pointed look at his formula that makes tragedy equal growth.

Planned Rampage Novelists, playwrights, and filmmakers have begun weaving the Columbine shootings into their fiction. Reviewing Dave Cullen’s Columbine, Brad Jones concentrates on the sad facts alone.

Message in a Klein Bottle
Celebrated young novelist Jesse Ball’s latest, The Way through Doors, twists and pulls at the nature of narrative itself. Lianne Habinek threads the labyrinth.

So This Is What the Dream Is Like Notorious for its violence and misogyny, or misunderstood for its biting social commentary? Grand Theft Auto IV polarizes; video game docent Phillip A. Lobo attempts to broker a meeting.

It’s a Mystery: “I’ve got a mind like a comic book” Bernie Gunther is back! In the newest incarnations of Philip Kerr’s crime series, the charismatic, cynical P.I.—more ready with a ribald wisecrack than a gun—has survived the decadent dog days of the Weimar Republic only to get down and dirty on the mean streets of Munich. Irma Heldman tags along after him.

Liminal
A poem by Christine Herzer

The Flâneur Arthur Phillips’ new novel, The Song Is You, takes a sentimental bachelor’s soundtrack and sets it to adult themes of family tragedy. Sam Sacks listens to hear whether the opus reveals new growth in the novelist—and whether it will grow on the reader.

Con-Men
That persistent bugaboo of publishers (and recently, the reading public): writers passing off others’ work as their own. Paul Maliszewski’s Fakers looks at some notorious cases, and John G. Rodwan Jr. weighs in.

Rescue Pieces
Much critical buzz has accompanied Philipp Meyer’s debut novel American Rust (there’s talk of a Pulitzer)—Karen Vanuska cuts through the hype and attempts to nail down the thing itself.

EMK For half a century, Senator Ted Kennedy has been carving out a legacy in Congress. The legacy and the man come into focus in Thomas J. Daly’s review of Last Lion.

Guide Virgil’s Aeneid has been attracting translators for centuries, and Sarah Ruden’s rendering is notable in more ways than one. (She calls him Vergil, for one thing, but that’s just the start.) Steve Donoghue regards her efforts in the latest “A Year with the Romans.”

Amen to That
Anne Easter Smith’s The King’s Grace builds its plot around the mystery of the Princes in the Tower—and borrows its conceit from Josephine Tey’s classic A Daughter in Time. Finch Bronstein-Rasmussen examines the book and the mystery.

Paddy Whacked Malcolm Gladwell is once again on the bestseller lists, this time for Outliers, about the social science of genius. Peter Coclanis begs to differ with the vox populi.

“Stephanie,” this month’s main page photo, was taken by Jonas Sacks, a Dutch/American Cinematography student currently living in Los Angeles. Jonas likes to use available (or natural) light, and explores the boundaries of motion picture negative film through stills. His website is www.jonassacks.com

March 2009

Foreign Items, Quality Various
China’s burgeoning modern literature – by citizens and expats alike – presents challenges to Western audiences (and sometimes to Chinese censors). Sam Sacks samples three new novels, including Yiyun Li’s The Vagrants.

Worth the Risk It’s been twenty years since the robbery of Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Jan van Doop retraces the art crime of the century in Ulrich Boser’s The Gardner Heist.

No Poorer For It Culture critics decry video games – including 2K’s BioShock – as mindless, pointless haphazard wastes of time. Phillip A. Lobo offers one fan’s spirited rebuttal.

It’s a Mystery: “Don’t be so sure I’m as crooked as I’m supposed to be” Dashiell Hammett’s daughter, Josephine Hammett Marshall, hand picked the very talented, three-time Edgar winner Joe Gores to write Spade & Archer, the prequel to The Maltese Falcon. The result, Irma Heldman says, surely has Hammett smiling among the “angels.”

Big Kid Thug or genius? Artist or gangster? In his brief, troubled life – and now in the new movie Notorious – The Notorious B.I.G. was an enigma. Andrew Martin sorts myth from legend.

Archimedes and the Plesiosaur
Peter Ackroyd’s Thames: the Biography is a rambling, list-laden account of the much-storied river. Our London correspondent Bryn Haworth tests the waters.

Second Glance:
The Wit and Woe of Mavis Gallant
Mavis Gallant wrote some of the best – though too often neglected – short stories of the 20th century. In this regular feature, Karen Vanuska unearths the treasures.

Frank Lloyd Wright Annex T.C. Boyle is the latest writer to dramatize the story of the women in Frank Lloyd Wright’s life. Caedmon Haas tours The Women and blueprints how well Boyle’s latest biographical novel stands up. The Inner Voice A poem by Charles Jodoin A Year with the Romans: Ten Tips on Terence He was a slave who wrote his way to freedom – unless he wasn’t, and unless he didn’t. Steve Donoghue’s “A Year with the Romans” looks at the great comic playwright Terence.

Blue Music The one jazz album even hardened jazz haters own – Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue – turns fifty this year. John G. Rodwan, Jr. plays out the tracks of its long, strange life.

Who Moved My Charioteer?
In How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer tries to anatomize the choosing brain. Lianne Habinek – with an assist from some guy named Plato – anatomizes the anatomizer.

On Finding That My First Novel Can Be Bought on Amazon.com for $0.01
Here today, gone tomorrow – remaindered on Amazon.com the day after that! Martha Moffett turns in a cautionary tale of the tangled fate of one novel.

President Pepys Ronald Reagan was the only modern U.S. President to keep a daily journal. Steve Donoghue plumbs The Unabridged Reagan Diaries in search of the diarist’s soul.

The Two Year Anniversary Quiz!
Celebrate Open Letters’ Two Year Anniversary by joining us in an impossible quiz!

The illustrations of Frank Lloyd Wright’s lover and of Isabella Stewart Gardner are by Rachel Burgess, of Brookline, Massachusetts. She has a B.A. in Literature from Yale University and an M.F.A. in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts. Her work can be viewed at www.rachelsillustrations.com. Her favorite poet is W.B. Yeats.

February 2009

Excess
A poem by Paul Violi

Writhing on the Floor Harold Pinter, a giant of 20th century literature, is dead, but the legacy of his work lives on. In a letter from London on a recent performance of Pinter’s No Man’s Land, Bryn Haworth takes a look at how the poet and playwright prepared his own memorial.

The Trouble with Harry
Norwegian Jo Nesbø, a musician, songwriter and economist, is also one of Europe’s most acclaimed crime writers who, to date, has given us two thrillers that are beautifully spun and deeply evocative. Veteran mystery maven Irma Heldman explores the latest hit from Scandinavia.

More Harm than Good In 1979, the mighty Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan - and quickly got bogged down in a quagmire from which victory seemed impossible. In The Great Gamble, Gregory Feifer examines what happened; Zac Marconi tries to tie it all together.

It’s All His Fault Thomas DiLorenzo, in Hamilton’s Curse, lays all the present-day woes of the United States at the feet of that most problematic of Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton. Did Aaron Burr do us all a favor? Thomas Daly weighs the prosecution’s case.

“… and you have got some friends of the wrong sort dear boy”
And you thought text-messaging was bad! In the 1920s, the gin-soaked youth movement of the Bright Young People swept through London, making headlines and raising eyebrows. Honoria St. Cyr takes a whirl through D. J. Taylor’s book on the subject and asks: “WTF?”

Sweet Bright Lady In the 6th Century, Boethius wrote a little tract that has been a guide and touchstone to writers, poets, politicians, and pundits ever since. David Slavitt has produced a new translation of The Consolation of Philosophy; Steve Donoghue explores the world of Boethius in this latest installment of “A Year with the Romans.”

The Sounds Are Not the Flowers
In her new novel Lark and Termite, Jayne Anne Phillips grapples with the challenge of using intricate language to convey wordless innocence. Sam Sacks is sympathetic to her goal, but he can’t help thinking of William Faulkner …

Free with Subscription! Order Now!
Evan Thomas, under the aegis of Newsweek, with substantial researcher assistance, after the editing of … well, “A Long Time Coming”, the first post-election account of President Obama’s campaign, got written somehow. Greg Waldmann goes into it with high hopes - and then conducts the autopsy.

Going Off Course with Melville and Liebling Two seemingly dissimilar figures in the American literary landscape - Herman Melville and A. J. Liebling - shared at least one thing aside from a way with words: they weren’t afraid of a little digression now and then. John G. Rodwan Jr. follows along for the stories.

Cosa Mangia Oggi! The city that never sleeps also never stops eating, or writing about what it eats. The new food writing collection Gastropolis, edited by Annie Hauck-Lawson and Jonathan Deutsch, takes the reader on a culinary safari through the history and variety of New York’s food culture. Mary Jane Weedman tucks in and savors the fare.

Another World Than This
They were wealthy, influential, and for two centuries in England they wielded power to rival the king’s … but who were the Earls of Pembroke (and their equally formidable wives)? In Quarrel with the King, Adam Nicolson takes us beyond the pomp, and here Steve Donoghue looks at the politics of family.

Jeffrey Eaton is a fundraiser and amateur photographer. He lives within spitting distance of the US Capitol, though “West Unity Road,” was taken in Unity, New Hampshire. His photographs have been featured in the April 2007 and November 2007 issues of Open Letters. His essay, “Raging Bull,” appeared in November 2008.

January 2009

Jack Spicer on Mars
When Jack Spicer was alive, his books could only be had in small editions, in and around the Bay area. Thanks to a new collection, My Vocabulary Did This to Me, that work has finally arrived. Jared White takes us deep into Spicer’s magical, reckless world.

3 poems by Max Jacob translated by Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney.

Finely Woven Webs Poetry meets anatomy when Lianne Habinek reads Donne, who, in “The Flea” and other poems, aimed to discover the seat of the soul

And a Tree
John Taggart’s most recent book, There Are Birds, might net him a wider audience, thanks to a personal touch in those trademark cadences. Adam Golaski guides us into Taggart’s songlike sonorities.

The Damage Collector
C.D. Wright collects her poems from scraps of overheard conversation, wandering memories, newspaper headlines. In this review of Rising, Falling, Hovering, John Cotter surveys the damage suspended in that scaffolding.

2 poems by Catullus
translated by Keith Newton

One Encounter: On Finding a Copy of Ovid’s Fasti at the Local Goodwill Among the Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb, Steve Donoghue unearths a rare secondhand treasure in Ovid’s difficult, underrated Fasti. And he celebrates.

Like Life
The lyric I and the lyric eye are in play and in question in Stephanie Young’s second book, Picture Palace. Elisa Gabbert illuminates its pitfalls and its charms.

Foutez-moi le paix! It may be debatable whether the most maudit of all the poètes deserves the tribute, but Gaston Frontenac finds the nasty, beautiful Rimbaud well served by Edmund White’s new Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel

2 poems by Peretz Markish
translated by Amelia Glaser

Water Lily Mud
Lorine Niedecker knew the literary life in New York, fell for Louis Zukofsky, published in Objectivist magazines, then returned to Wisconsin, where her poems continued growing spare, surreal, and deep. Heather Green reviews what the new collection Radical Varnacular adds to our understanding of her world.

Katrina Cries Sharon Fulton reviews Patricia Smith’s Blood Dazzler, a “resonant and devastating” examination of the Katrina disaster and the Bush administration’s failure to contain its fallout.

One More, Please? It’s been years—too long!—since Martha Argerich has preformed solo. Greg Waldmann eagerly pours thorugh her new DVD and the history of her brilliant career for clues to her reclusiveness and for glimmers of hope.

Ugly on Purpose
Saxophone legend John Coltrane took jazz further from its traditional sound than any artist of his day. Philip Larkin kept traditional rhyme and meter alive in English verse. Richard Palmer’s new study, Such Deliberate Disguises, attempts to make the case for one influencing the other. John G. Rodwan Jr. puts the emphasis on “attempts.”

It’s a Mystery: “I Confess That I Covet Your Skull” Irma Heldman is back on the beat, first with a rollicking, bawdy yarn depicting an infamous, turn-of-the century caper masterminded by Professor Moriarty—Sherlock Holmes’ archenemy. Then she matches wits with a cheeky mini-tome refuting the great detective’s solution to his most illustrious case.

“Suffer, Monkey, Suffer!”
Chris Adrian’s preoccupation with “unorthodox angels” persists in his third book, A Better Angel. John Matthew Fox ranks Adrian’s demons in this artful story collection.

Like Diamonds on Display
Karen Vanuska finds plenty to praise in Louise Erdrich’s The Red Convertible: New and Selected Stories—as well as some loose bolts and steam under the hood.

Potato Style Would the inventor of “sprung rhythm” have lived a more carefree existence in a world that allowed him to live and love the way he wanted? What poetry would he write in such a world? Steve Donoghue takes a brisk dip into Paul Mariani’s Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life.

The cover illustration of Jack Spicer, along with the illustrations of Lorine Niedecker and C.D. Wright, is by Rachel Burgess, of Brookline, Massachusetts. She has a B.A. in Literature from Yale University and an M.F.A. in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts. Her work can be viewed at www.rachelsillustrations.com. Her favorite poet is W.B. Yeats.

December 2008

It’s a Mystery:
Imaginative Eyes
It was a year full of fine additions to the genre, but according to regular “It’s a Mystery” columnist Irma Heldman, two among them were decidedly the cream of the crop. One is a first and one a twenty-first!

Frame by Frame When life and art overlap, the results are always complex – and that’s certainly true of autobiographical graphic novelist Art Spiegelman, creator of Maus. Sharon Fulton takes a look at a tricked-out new reprint of his earliest work, Breakdowns.

No Sign of Horror in the Heavens
Mary Borden’s long-forgotten 1929 memoir of World War I, The Forbidden Zone, takes its readers into the harrowing world of a front-line trauma nurse. Joanna Scutts joins her in the trenches and assesses the damage.

World-Famous Feelings For decades, Oscar Hammerstein transformed the world of musical theater, writing the lyrics for such blockbusters as Showboat, Oklahoma! and The Sound of Music. Michael Adams gives us front row seats for a tour through the master’s many moods.

A Drink-Man Among Drink-Men “Write while I’m sober?” legendary pint-puller Brendan Behan once growled, “What arse would want to read that?” His opinion has been shared by literary men through the ages, but perhaps none with more fidelity than Kingsley Amis; John G. Rodwan, Jr. bellies up to the bar and spends time with some of the 20th century’s most tippling typers.

Semi-Obvious Before there was Norman Rockwell, there was J.C. Leyendecker, inventor of the advertising brand, star illustrator of The Saturday Evening Post, and clandestine gay man. America loved what Leyendecker drew; Steve Donoghue shows us what they were really seeing.

Where Will the Devil Show the Most Malice
John Demos, author of The Unredeemed Captive, has produced The Enemy Within, a new comprehensive history of witch-hunting, a mania that has gripped mankind for centuries. From Salem to the McCarthy hearings and beyond, Rita Consalvos surveys this new survey.

Lucky Bastard Everybody’s heard of Hannibal, who crossed the Alps and out-fought the Romans in battle after battle. Far fewer people have heard of Scipio, the young general who finally defeated him. And nobody’s heard of the hero Ascanio Tedeschi uncovers in his examination of two books on ancient Rome’s great and near-great.

Determinism
A poem by Michael Trocchia

They Went to Work Early
Jane Meyers’ The Dark Side describes the United States’ rapid descent into the murky ways of torture and secret autocracy. Whether its the expediting of illegal proceedings or the out-sourcing of brutality, Greg Waldmann tries not to flinch from what he finds in Meyers’ account.

“For I am a Brid of Paradise”
The kings and counts of Tudor England wouldn’t have known the name of minor Cheshire landowner Humphrey Newton, but in reviewing Deborah Youngs’ book on the man, Steve Donoghue illustrates just how much Newton can teach us about the era. “A Year with the Tudors” concludes here.

The Evidence of Absence Roberto Bolano’s The Savage Detectives took the literary world by storm, and his latest posthumous release, 2666, is five times as long and ten times as ambitious. Find out what tales dead men tell as Sam Sacks tackles this immense and problematic monster.

Our cover photo comes to us from Vladimir Gitin, who teaches Russian at Harvard University. More of his photos can be viewed here and here. He lives in Boston and St. Petersburg.

November 2008

Raging Bull
In this tensely-charged election year, all eyes fix on the blogosphere – of 1787. Jeffrey Eaton signs us in to Library of America’s 2-volume Debate on the Constitution and fills the comments field.

Young Bull and Old Jack Before Mexico, Tangier, or even rehab, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs were deeply involved in a real-life murder plot. Now the book they wrote about it finally gets its day in court and Andrew Martin delivers his literary verdict on And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks.

Laughter in the Darkness What is it about Booker and Nobel judges that make one reach for Chambers Biographical Dictionary only to hurl it across the room in despair? Sam Sacks seeks the source of prize-winner Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger.

The two airheads you meet in heaven
A poem by Kate Schapira

Kaor! Three new books trek the red rocks of Mars, and although they don’t exactly admit it, they’re in search of one thing: signs of life. Astrid Van Sarisgaard tells us what they discover, or don’t.

Six Heads a Day
Before the pestiferous little Corsican conquered Europe, he tried his hand at Egypt – Steve Donoghue exposes how the general disposes in his review of Paul Strathern’s Napoleon in Egypt.

It’s a Mystery: All Hail the Queen With this cheery account of the reigning royalty of murder mysteries, P.D. James, Irma Heldman inaugurates her monthly mystery column in these webpages. Irma once delighted fans of her “On the Docket” column under the pen-name O.L. Bailey, and Open Letters proudly welcomes her back to the beat she made her own!

I Can Haz Qwalitee Kontrol Millions of people all over the world feed their pets food manufactured under circumstances that would make Upton Sinclair spin in his grave. Sara Shaffer sifts through the ingredients of Marion Nestle’s Pet Food Politics.

The Same Indifference
In The Same Man, David Lebedoff maintains that Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell were Doppelgängers, both in their art and their ethics; John G. Rodwan Jr. begs to differ.

Tomb Sweet Tomb Heaven help the author who becomes a cult figure in his own lifetime – Sharon Fulton reads the latest from fan favorite Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book, to see what all the fuss is about.

Soft by Nature and Quick to Tears
Euripides’ Medea has been explained, performed, and debated for the last 2000 years. Panagiotis Polichronakis looks at Robin Robertson’s new translation and ponders whether it’s fit for scholars, dramaturgs, or the all-elusive common reader.

All the Sad Old Men In Vivian Gornick’s The Men in My Life, a committed feminist writes a collection of essays about literary men; Laura Tanenbaum monitors these latest dispatches from the gender conflict.

A Woman Walks Into Her Therapist’s Office…
Fans of Sylvia Brownrigg’s fiction admire the hidden complexity beneath its surface simplicity; we plumb the depths of The Delivery Room and Morality Tale with Karen Vanuska.

They Were Almost Tudors In the penultimate installment of his “Year with the Tudors,” Steve Donoghue pauses to consider some of the young men and women who didn’t quite make it onto the roster of Tudor monarchs.

Our cover art comes to us from Michela Emeson, a painter originally from New Hampshire. More of her work can be found at http://michelaemeson.com. —read an interview with Michela on our blog!

October 2008

The Education of Barack Obama
A mere month remains until the most fiercely fought and most historically pivotal American presidential election of the last half-century. In July, Greg Waldmann served up an in-depth look at Republican John McCain. Here, just in time for the election, he does likewise for Democrat Barack Obama.

Epilogue, Notes for an Eclogue
A poem by Andrea Zanzotto, translated by Wayne Chambliss

The Vampire Fan(g) Guide Never before have so many vampires lurked on our bookshelves, so, just in time for Hallowe’en, Sharon Fulton unearths dozens of undead novels and sinks her teeth into their relative merits in the first installment of her Fan(g) Guide!

Murders Most Foul
What constitutes particularly Southern fiction? In reckoning Ron Rash’s Serena, Karen Vanuska goes below the Mason-Dixon line in search of something that sets Southern fiction apart - aside from all the dead bodies stacked like cordwood.

Is There a Doctor in the House? Neuroscience? In Elsinore? Lianne Habinek has Hamlet on the brain and goes at the question in book and volume. You may never think about Hamlet, or think about thinking, in the same way again.

The Lord Won’t Mind Confederate general Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson achieved immortal fame in his Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1862. Peter Cozzens re-examines the man behind the legend, and Steve Donoghue adjudges the results.

Write, Repeat Notorious critic and essayist Christopher Hitchens has commented that certain writers are not shy of repeating themselves, and his critics have fired it right back at him. John G. Rodwan, Jr. enters the echo chamber.

Set in a Turquoise Sea
“It assaults me, and I adore it!” exclaimed Isabella Stewart Gardner of the legendary city of Venice, and legions of visitors have felt likewise. Venetian writer Tiziano Scarpa writes a love-letter to his spellbinding native city. Professor Hugh Seames has the oar.

The New Road to Meritocracy?
With his new book and coinage Crowdsourcing, Jeff Howe argues that a democratic, everyman wisdom is the secret to business success. So is the vox populi really the key to quality? Kathleen Smith, crowd of one, weighs the argument.

The Master Touch:
One Encounter with Shakespeare’s Henry VIII

William Shakespeare lived under the Tudors for most of his life, but he only wrote about them once, in his play The History of the Life of King Henry VIII - or did he? In our latest One Encounter, and also the new installment in his “Year with the Tudors,” Steve Donoghue takes a look at that play and the fractious theories attendant.

October’s cover photo, “One is the Loneliest Number,” comes to us from Wes Thomas. Wes lives in Huntsville, Alabama. He is not a photographer by profession, but does shoot occasionally for magazines, does a few weddings a year and sells his work to various clients. Mostly, he just shoots for his own enjoyment. You can see more of Wes’ work at: www.flickr.com/photos/bamawester..