Open Letters Monthly, February 2012
I’m not sure what Punxsatawney Phil did this morning, but something tells me we have at least a few more weeks of winter left, no matter how mild it’s been this far. So to carry us through at least the next four, we have the February issue of Open Letters Monthly. February may be known as the F-month around here, but this issue holds a bounty beyond expletives:
Greg Waldmann gives us some political commentary on the post-Florida incarnation of Mitt Romney 3.0 and reviews Condoleezza Rice’s No Higher Honor.
There’s a little something for the middle of the month (you know what day I’m talking about): Jessica Miller on Everything I Know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels, by Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books fame.
And poets, and poetry! Stephen Akey takes a bittersweet look at Wallace Stevens; Austin Allen discusses Philip Larkin, who—yes—once wrote a poem about a unicorn (take that, mum and dad!); Maureen Thorson reads Kate Schapira’s two new books of poetry: How We Saved the City and The Bounty: Four Addresses; and Fani Papageorgiou gives us an original poem, The Drifter.
There’s fiction: John Cotter on Eli Gottlieb’s dark “crackerjack thriller,” The Face Thief; Craig Dowd with Tom Piccirilli’s American noir Every Shallow Cut; Christopher Urban on Tom McCarthy’s reissued early novel Men in Space; and a review from Paul Griffin of Ayad Akhtar’s fine and serious debut novel, American Dervish.
And life stories: Steve Donoghue on W. Mark Ormrod’s excellent new biography of Edward III; and Victoria Olsen on the sad tale of Virginia Woolf’s secret sister (and William Makepeace Thackeray’s granddaughter) Laura Stephen.
Irma Heldman thrills to Chris Morgan Jones’ The Silent Oligarch and reassures us that “glasnost did not, as feared in some circles, spell the end of spy fiction.”
Andrew Ladd writes about the discomfiting fascination with writing about bullfighting.
In Open Letters Weekly, Steve Donoghue beams up Greg Cox’s Star Trek, The Rings of Time.
OLM talks to sculptor Megan Heeres, creator of this month’s cover piece, Home Alone, on, among other things, her passion for papermaking:
I love that paper can be 2D and 3D – that it is this super ubiquitous material but it also can be alarmingly elegant. It has religious (holy books, Joss paper) and socio-political (money, contracts), and quotidienne (butcher paper, toilet paper) connotations. I love that I can begin with this somewhat slimy, icky mass of paper pulp and create a considered composition.”
A Quiz for Black History Month, was enlightening (and I did well)—and thus fortified, shall slog through the rest of this short and not traditionally sweet month. I invite you all to do the same.
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Filed under Sci Fi | Tags: attitude., Book, Comment, Download, FREE, hope., Last, Open, paper | Comment (0)Open Letters Monthly, August 2011
The August issue of Open Letters Monthly is up and it’s hot! The issue, that is. Although August is too, but you knew that. This month:
Nicholas Nardini takes on Jonathan R. Eller’s scholarly “narrated bibliography” Becoming Ray Bradbury.
Laura Kolbe looks at The Artificial Silk Girl and After Midnight, both by Irmgard Keun, observer of prewar Nazi Germany and its “fools”—“girls and women whose political and social naïveté (and sometimes outright stupidity) keep them from either supporting or resisting Nazism, but who are surrounded by acquaintances who care very deeply about Germany’s political fate and social mores.”
John Cotter reviews Daborah Kay Davies’ dark and edgy novel of downward-spiraling romance, True Things About Me.
Joanna Scutts appreciates Conscience, the dramatic family biography of Louisa (great-granddaughter of Socialist Norman) Thomas.
Joshua Lustig considers Benjamin Markovits’ third novel in his Lord Byron trilogy, Childish Loves.
Thomas J. Daly weighs in on Charles Rappleye’s biography of “The Great Facilitator,” Robert Morris: Financier of the American Revolution.
Irma Heldman continues her “It’s a Mystery” series with David Ignatius’ political thriller Blood Money.
Jeff Alessandrelli ruminates on Claire Becker’s poetry of questioning and belief, Where We Think It Should Go.
Steve Donoghue’s Year with the Windsors looks at the overwhelmed, unprepared wartime king, George VI.
Rosemary Mitchell examines the unsung 19th-century gothic historical novelist William Harrison Ainsworth.
From a.rawlings, an original poem, The Great Canadian, from her collection Environment Canada.
Quyng Vantu, whose installation “Chapel for One” literally graces this month’s cover, talks with OLM about the intersections of art and architecture, the ephemeral and the permanent.
And last but never least, this month’s OLM Quiz, Stinking Up the Great Outdoors, is devoted to those authors who celebrated the hinterlands (8/10—I must be more of an al fresco girl than I thought).
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Open Letters Monthly, March 2011
Coming in like a lion, the March issue of Open Letters Monthly has shown up with a big splash of color and a great set of articles, some even bearing teeth and claws..
The issue opens with a literary quiz to get some blood flowing to the brain, the theme of which is Exile and Cunning—this winter having made proverbial exiles of us all. This is not your walk-in-the-park Guardian quiz. And no, I am not publicly admitting my score.
Speaking of teeth and claws, Jason Haslam leads off the book reviews with a look at Edgar Rice Burroughs’ iconic Tarzan of the Apes, and how the book and its offspring hold up a mirror to the issues of its time (and ours).
Greg Waldmann examines Sari Nusseibeh’s What is a Palestinian State Worth? and its humanist alternatives to the two-state solution.
Trevor Ross hefts The Oxford Companion to the Book, edited by Michael F. Suarez and S.J. and H. R. Woudhuysen: “Now that catalogs have become databases, reference shelves are being stocked with books about the very books they’ve replaced on those shelves.”
Joseph P. Wood reviews Methland, Nick Reding’s nuanced look at the darker parts of the heartland.
Irma Heldman gives a rave to Taylor Stevens’ action-packed, classy The Informationist.
A.C. Childers takes on Chris Skidmore’s tale of Tudor intrigue, Death and the Virgin Queen: Elizabeth I and the Dark Scandal That Rocked the Throne.
In his Year with the Windsors, Steve Donoghue spends some time with Queen Victoria’s eldest son Bertie, also known as King Edward VII—“a rotund bearded fellow who always dressed perfectly, loved pomp and show, expected deference and rewarded it with a nod, a smile, a phlegmy, ebullient laugh.”
Artist Rebecca Vaughan discusses her cover piece, “Celestial Navigation,” as well as pheromones, re-gifting, being open to love, and the Las Vegas Neon Museum boneyard (which also, coincidentally, contributed to the iconography of the Like Fire banner).
In the world of video gaming, Phillip A. Lobo floats a review of Visceral Games’ Dead Space and Dead Space 2.
For this month’s poetry selection, Morten Høi Jensen enjoys the bittersweetness of Rachel Wetzsteon’s posthumous new collection, Silver Roses: Poems, and David Schloss offers up an original poem, Back Home.
And for a final bit of tooth and claw to take us into spring, Tuc McFarland covers Kieran Mulvaney’s sad report on a noble warrior, The Great White Bear—its prognosis is not good, but I still can’t help but hope that it won’t yet out like a lamb.
(The installation pictured above is “Celestial Navigation” by Rebecca Vaughan and Peter Illig, acrylic paint and mixed media, 2011.)