The beat goes on. Larry Beckett, the one-time songwriter (he famously collaborated with the late Tim Buckley) has long been immersed in an ongoing poetic project called “American Cycle,’’ which takes an ambitious look at the folkloric past—from Paul Bunyan and P.T. Barnum, to Chief Joseph and Amelia Earhart and other figures from the “old weird America.’’ His latest book, simply titled Beat Poetry (Beatdom Books, 150 pages), tries to put into meaningful perspective the oft heralded if frequently over-hyped revolution in American poetry that took birth from the vernacular modesty of that good obstetrician William Carlos Williams and incorporated […]
Category: Book Reviews
Finding Refuge From the End of a Marriage: Joelle Fraser’s ‘The Forest House’
by Alyssa Cami
Nature plays an integral part in Joelle Fraser’s new book, The Forest House: A Year’s Journey into the Landscape of Love, Loss and Starting Over (Counterpoint Press, 224 pages), which chronicles her life right after her marriage ends. Wanting to disrupt the life of her young son, Dylan, as little as possible, Fraser resolves to stay near the small mountain town where Dylan’s father lives. The only place she can find that’s close enough to town, but far away from the gossip (it was Fraser’s decision to leave her husband) and sympathy there, is a one-bedroom home tucked into the […]
Having It All, and Nothing to Show For It: Christine Sneed’s ‘Little Known Facts’
by Irene Huhulea
The obsession with celebrity is arguably more intense today than it has ever been before. In the millennial years, the somewhat nebulous concept of fame has been democratized, intensified, and extended to those outside of the film and television industries of Hollywood. Yet despite the elevation of everyday people to the status of public figures, the hierarchical nature of celebrity continues to privilege movie stars above all else, using their fame and talent as the benchmark against which all others are judged. Exploring celebrity through this lens, Christine Sneed’s novel, Little Known Facts (Bloomsbury, 304 pages), tells the story of […]
A Girl’s Honesty Sees Her Through Adults’ Lunacy: Lenore Zion’s ‘Stupid Children’
by Paul Wilner
There’s a lot of good writing out there—an amazing amount, really, considering the ongoing moaning and groaning going on about the “death of literacy’’ and other current cultural shibboleths—but not that much that is truly original, free of clearly demarcated literary influences, antecedents and referents. A thousand Eggers, David Foster Wallaces, let alone Kerouac and Salinger imitators, bloom from every Brooklyn basement and suburban redoubt. All the more remarkable, then, when someone finds a way to make it new, speaking her own truths against the powers of the past. Which makes Los Angeles author Lenore Zion’s first novel, Stupid Children […]
The Noisiest Book Review in the World Also Pretty Entertaining: ‘The Best of RALPH’
by Christopher Connor
The Noisiest Book Review in the Known World: The Best of RALPH (Mho & Mho Works; 979 pages, two volumes, edited by Lolita Lark) is a collection of the more acclaimed book reviews, essays, excerpts, and letters published by RALPH: The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities. Originally known as The Fessenden Review, the literary magazine published reviews and excerpts of little known or self-published books while it also, as they proudly state on their website, “lambasted many of the dubious stars of the East Coast Publishing Establishment.” Following the demise of the printed magazine, RALPH, operating from […]
Giving Voice to the Stifled, the Neglected, the Heartbroken: Susan Steinberg’s ‘Spectacle’
by Miranda Morgan
Susan Steinberg’s Spectacle (152 pages; Graywolf Press) is a story collection of intertwining vignettes, a series of experimental narratives that speak to the vulnerability of being female and the roles women are expected to play in a male-dominant world. Steinberg does not cast a rosy hue over her portrayal of society. She writes her truth—her female narrators’ truth—and makes no attempt to censor it. The narrators’ voices blend together, as do the male characters: lovers, fathers, and brothers move in and out of one another until they become indistinguishable. The opening story, “Superstar,” tells of a woman who breaks into […]
Galvanized Yet Undone by a Tragedy: Dennis Mahoney’s ‘Fellow Mortals’
by Christopher Connor
On the first page of Dennis Mahoney’s first novel, Fellow Mortals (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 277 pages), a fire burns down two houses and damages two more on Arcadia Street. It’s pretty much all downhill from there for the characters. As their lives creep along in the aftermath of that tragedy, Mahoney’s characters show us how a single event can galvanize a group of people yet destroy them at the same time. Infelicitous mailman Henry Cooper starts the blaze on Arcadia Street while trying to light a cigar on his route. The fire demolishes the houses of Nan and Joan […]
Letting Go of Their Dreams for Whatever Might Come Next: Jim Gavin’s ‘Middle Men’
by Laura Cogan
From time to time we may ask ourselves, what is a short story? To be sure, length is a defining characteristic, but it is not enough. Can we trace certain recurring threads throughout the now expansive history of the form: a constant set of concerns, a type of character, a type of plot? The form is, to its credit, too nimble for such decrees; what Alice Munro does with a short story is dramatically distinct from what George Saunders does, and both use the form with exactness and brilliance. But perhaps we can observe, in general, that there are particular […]
Getting Out from the Daily Rut: Joshua Mohr’s ‘Fight Song’
by Christopher Connor
Suburban harmony is under attack in Joshua Mohr’s new novel, Fight Song (Soft Skull Press, 272 pages). The book is a humorous ride through one week in the life of a middle age man who is going off the rails. But it’s also a critical look at how suburbia has been taken over by gadgets and corporations, as well as the stasis that traps people inside their jobs and within their gated communities. Bob Coffen is one of those people. When we meet him, he’s just trying to bike from his job to his boring home. He’s been working at […]
Not for the Money, But for the Art: Jim Harrison’s ‘The River Swimmer’
by Christopher Connor
Two men looking at life from opposite directions are at the center of The River Swimmer, the new collection of two novellas by Jim Harrison (Grove Press, 198 pages). Each novella contains a rich, original story but read together they offer different perspectives on what is essentially the same issue. “The Land of Unlikeness” examines the nostalgia of a man who was once defined by art but has since given up his passion. Clive, a former painter turned art history professor, returns to his hometown of Ypsilanti, Michigan, following an embarrassing incident at a lecture. Placed in charge of caring […]
Words Are Not Enough: David Shields’ ‘How Literature Saved My Life’
by Molly Falck
David Shields’ How Literature Saved My Life looks like a book. It has 224 pages, printed with ink forming words, and words forming paragraphs that form chapters. Knopf will publish it February 5 and those who dare read this uncategorizable form of non-fiction will speed eagerly through it—although a few readers might rip out pages in anguish. Shields’ new work wants desperately to believe in books. It posits, after all, that books contain therapeutic, even life-saving properties. But where on the bookshelf do you put a book that doesn’t trust words? Within these highly literary pages, Shields undermines words using the only tool he has: words. […]
The Story Is All That We Are: Percival Everett’s ‘Percival Everett By Virgil Russell’
by Miranda Morgan
Percival Everett By Virgil Russell by Percival Everett proves to be exactly what the title advertises; a novel that teases the reader with the identity of the narrator until the last page and even then, we are left wondering. The book opens with a conversation in a nursing home between a dying father and his son, presumably based on Percival Everett and his own father, a final attempt to connect and salvage a relationship weakened by time spent apart. The character of the father begins by telling his son he is going to read his writing aloud. “And I’ve written […]