Reviews
January 14, 2010
The Marble Faun: Hawthorne Feeds on Shadows 1
by Kevin Frazier
Has there ever been another writer of dark, morbid, surrealistic fiction who is as warm and humane as Nathaniel Hawthorne?
January 8, 2010
The Humbling: Philip Roth’s Bleak Theater 0
by Bud Nelson Brooks
Dutifully Roth subjects his madman to a series of increasingly play-like situations, each tragically calibrated to make him lose his mind.
December 31, 2009
The Berlin Stories: A Book for Year’s End 3
by Lydia Kiesling
The Berlin Stories is two short novels, published separately in the 1930s. It was an inspired pairing. Together they flesh out the world Isherwood describes: Berlin of the very early 1930s, imperfect in the extreme, but a paradise for Isherwood’s hitherto uneven talent.
December 28, 2009
Off Campus Housing: Richard Rushfield’s Don’t Follow Me, I’m Lost 3
by Patrick Brown
The Supreme Dicks seem to oppose more or less everything and everyone else. And therein lies the greatness of this book.
December 9, 2009
The Screwed Up World of Amy and Jordan 0
by Zoe Roller
Too many comics coast on manufactured nihilism, but Amy and Jordan feels like an act of exorcism, transmuting real anguish into entertainment. It is a testament to the the survival instinct.
November 24, 2009
The Death of the Absurd? 27
by James Kaelan
Laura van den Berg’s debut collection manages to establish an equilibrium between concept and poignancy. It doesn’t appear she trained to be a realist, but she may end up a champion of the movement.
