Matthew Barney, Zhang Huan, and many more...

INTERVIEWS

American Trilogist: An Interview with Kenneth Goldsmith
Interviewed by Kareem Estefan
Acclaimed conceptual poet Kenneth Goldsmith is the author of numerous works of “uncreative writing”—books that record quotidian events or transcribe unliterary texts to reveal permutations in the language and achieve a kind of sculpted beauty.

Surviving the Wolverines: An Interview with Stephen Graham Jones
Interviewed by Gavin Pate
Stephen Graham Jones' great sympathy for his characters is filtered through the everyday detritus of contemporary American life, and the result is a picture that is frightening, hilarious, and all its own.

FEATURES

Seductive Notebooks: Paul Auster’s 21st-Century Fiction
Reviewed by Dennis Barone
In Auster’s post-2001 writing, protagonists have gone from being hunger artists to ill artists, and instead of the fluidity of identity that characterized the earlier fiction, the recovery of identity has become paramount.

REVIEWS: FICTION

Super Cell Anemia
Duncan B. Barlow
Through first-person journal entries, third-person narrative, and the occasional tract of modern anthroposophy, Super Cell Anemia offers a wide-ranging jaunt into a gnarly and somewhat schizophrenic urban universe. Reviewed by Christopher Lura

Girl Factory
Jim Krusoe
Krusoe’s fictional landscape is a world dictated by pure chance, where oddness is the norm, and where the strip-mall blandness of American suburban life is rendered hilariously surreal and violent. Reviewed by Michael Jauchen

Geek Mafia
& Geek Mafia: Mile Zero
Rick Dakan
The geek grifters of Dakan’s crime fantasy novels are anarchists, or claim to be, interested in causing chaos and making money. Reviewed by Spencer Dew

Unlucky Lucky Days
Daniel Grandbois
In his debut assortment of fabulist flash fiction, Grandbois delights us in small, with his chiseled prismatic shards. Reviewed by John Domini

America America
Ethan Canin
Canin offers a compelling story in the Iowa style—reading this novel is like sitting down with an articulate old timer and listening to him talk until the pot of coffee runs out. Reviewed by Luke Finsaas

The Lazarus Project
Aleksandar Hemon
Hemon expertly interlaces the narratives of two people effected by the brutal murder of Lazarus Averbuch in turn-of-the-century America. Reviewed by Salvatore Ruggiero

REVIEWS: NONFICTION

The Letters of John Cowper Powys and Emma Goldman
Edited by David Goodway
This new addition to the Powys letters covers the period between 1936 and 1940, and brings to print the correspondence between these two fiery literary figures. Reviewed by Jeff Bursey

How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology
Edited by Zong-qi Cai
Implicit in the question "How to Read Chinese Poetry" is whether reading Chinese poetry is any different from reading non-Chinese poetry. Reviewed by Lucas Klein

George Oppen: Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers
Edited by Stephen Cope
Over a decade in the making, Cope's selection presents an in-depth presentation of Oppen processing the poetics behind his highly acclaimed poetry. Reviewed by Joseph Bradshaw

In Search of the Blues
Marybeth Hamilton
Hamilton provides a solid overview of the efforts of several individuals who dedicated their lives to recovering the lost folk music of African-Americans. Reviewed by Tim W. Brown

Rock On: An Office Power Ballad
Dan Kennedy
Imagine landing your dream job, only to realize that this job completely destroys and invalidates the dreams you once had. Kennedy recounts his hilarious journey to disillusionment. Reviewed by Ellen Frazel

REVIEWS: POETRY

The Collected Poems
C.P. Cavafy
& Selected Poems
Federico García Lorca
The Oxford World’s Classics series has been issuing some of the finest in world literature for over one hundred years; these two bilingual editions are no exception. Reviewed by John Cunningham

The Ghetto and Other Poems
Lola Ridge
This 1918 volume received critical acclaim and accolades from major poets, yet for decades her work has been overlooked until now as it is being brought back into print. Reviewed by Michael Aiken

The Floating Bridge
David Shumate
In his recent collection of prose poems, Shumate explores such diverse subjects as translation, amateur Zen masters, and Franz Kafka’s first date. Reviewed by Kristina Marie Darling

Your Country is Great: Afghanistan-Guyana
Ara Shirinyan
Shirinyan’s new volume of Flarf-esque poetry is a testament to the self-defeating potential of descriptive language. Reviewed by Katie Fowley

REVIEWS: GRAPHIC NOVELS

The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite
Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá
Apocalypse Suite begins with a full-page illustration of a wrestling match between a human and a giant space-squid, setting both the time and the tone of this breathtaking story. Reviewed by Rudi Dornemann

Metronome
Veronique Tanaka
Tanaka isn’t interested in drawing as expression, but as an abstract visual music. Reviewed by Ken Chen

VACUM FALL FEATURE: ART & PHOTOGRAPHY

How To See A Work of Art in Total Darkness
Darby English
English investigates the limits of the proverbial American freedom in the work of five African American artists at the turn of the 21st-century. Reviewed by Christina Schmid

Driftless: Photographs from Iowa
Danny Wilcox Frazier
Frazier’s images endeavor to shed light on the people and places that mainstream media neglects to illustrate. Reviewed by Callie Clark-Wiren

Matthew Barney
Brandon Stosuy, Domenika Szope, Stephan Urbaschek, Matthew Barney
The primacy of the body as object—its fluctuations, trainability, aberrations, procreation, and death—is in a nutshell the Matthew Barney glass-bead game. Reviewed by Sean Smuda

Zhang Huan: Altered States
Edited by Melissa Chiu
Raw meat, blood, flies, nudity, animal hides, and ashes have made appearances in Zhang Huan's brutally confrontational and cathartic performances and sculptures. Reviewed by Carmen Tomfohrde

Rain Taxi Online Edition, Fall 2008 | © Rain Taxi, Inc. 2008

Kevin Goodan, Matthea Harvey, Alexandra Fuller, and many more...

INTERVIEWS

The Fuel-Type of Poetry: An Interview with Kevin Goodan
Interviewed by Kimberly Burwick
The best place to get Kevin Goodan to discuss his poetry is where he’s most comfortable—at home, in nature.

Writing to Unite People: An Interview with Adalet Ağaoğlu
Interviewed and translated by Figen Bingül
Ağaoğlu talks about everything from the Turkish avant-garde to the political problems facing her country.

FEATURES

Mahmoud Darwish, Exile's Poet: Critical Essays
& The Butterfly's Burden
Reviewed by Robert Milo Baldwin
Best known as the poet of Palestinian resistance, Mahmoud Darwish has a poetic range far wider than his politics. A book of collected essays explores this exiled poet’s work and life, while a new collection of Darwish’s poetry again shows his incredible resilience and attentiveness to the wonders of life.

Erotic Comics: Three Books
Reviewed by Paul Buhle
Three coffee-table books explore the erotic in comic book form.

Chapbook Corner: Keeping Creeley's Company
Essay by Noah Eli Gordon
In this special online installment of our Chapbook Corner, Noah Eli Gordon discusses design, community, and collaboration through the lens of three recent chapbook releases.

From the Backlist: Writings for the Oulipo
Ian Monk
Reviewed by Geoffrey Cruickshank-Hagenbuckle
Elected to the Oulipo in 1998, Monk is a master of the constricted form as well as an excellent translator of surrealist and Oulipo texts.

REVIEWS: POETRY

Inseparable
Lewis Warsh
The Riot Act
Geoffrey Young
& glad stone children
Edmund Berrigan
Despite their differences in age, lineage, and poetic temperament, these three poets, and especially these three new collections of their poetry, have much in common, and provide an exemplary overview of what’s happening at the cutting edge of avant-garde contemporary American poetry. Reviewed by Mark Terrill

Modern Life
Matthea Harvey
Harvey’s surprising, intelligent, and mysterious poetry spurns the personal and turns often to the pun, to the non sequitur, and to mathematical double-meanings. Reviewed by Wendy Vardaman

Dismal Rock
Davis McCombs
A sandstone formation in Edmonson County, Kentucky serves as the geographical and poetic locus of this impressive, regionally-inspired collection. Reviewed by Kyle Churney

Kino: The Poetry of Nikola Vaptsarov
Nikola Vaptsarov
Vaptsarov, a Bulgarian poet executed by his country’s fascist government at age thirty-two, strives to balance the personal and the public in his poetry. Reviewed by George Kalamaras

Winners Have Yet to Be Announced: A Song for Donny Hathaway
Ed Pavlic
Written as a response to the music of singer/songwriter Donny Hathaway, Pavlic’s third volume sketches Hathaway’s life while situating the musician and his work within the Black music continuum. Reviewed by Michael A. Antonucci

The Age of Huts (Compleat)
Ron Silliman
Some of Silliman’s most innovative early writings are once again in print, offering a clearer picture of his ongoing life poem, Ketjak. Reviewed by David Huntsperger

To and From
G.E. Patterson
In his newest collection, Patterson takes on the sonnet form, showing that even in its argumentative structure, there is much that cannot be resolved. Reviewed by E. K. Mortenson

REVIEWS: FICTION

The Man Who Turned Into Himself
David Ambrose
& The Dream of the Stone
Christina Askounas
Each originally published fifteen years ago, these riveting stories of alternate and alien worlds are well worth their restoration to print. Reviewed by Kelly Everding

Guantanamo
Dorothea Dieckmann
Guantanamo chronicles the transformation of Rashid, a German who, while vacationing in South Asia, is arrested and shipped to America’s most famous detention facility. Reviewed by Spencer Dew

Johnny One-Eye: A Tale of the American Revolution
Jerome Charyn
This picaresque story follows the eponymous hero from his humble beginnings, born in a brothel in Manhattan, to his brush with greatness. Reviewed by T. K. Dalton

Hoffman’s Hunger
Leon de Winter
Protagonist Felix Hoffman thinks about global unrest as he deals with his own myriad physical ailments, all while gorging himself on food and drink. Reviewed by Kevin Carollo.

Hotel Crystal
Olivier Rolin
Rolin provides a brief glimpse into the life of an unreliable narrator living an unreliable life of the imagination from hotel room to hotel room. Reviewed by Levi Teal

In Milton Lumky Territory
Philip K. Dick
Before Dick became a successful science fiction writer, he wrote realistic fiction in which characters struggle for the American Dream. Reviewed by Ryder W. Miller

Gentleman Jigger: A Novel of the Harlem Renaissance
Richard Bruce Nugent
Written in the 1930s, this nervy novel speaks out on racism against darker-skinned blacks within the African American community and more. Reviewed by Douglas Messerli

REVIEWS: NONFICTION

The Legend of Colton H. Bryant
Alexandra Fuller
Fuller turns her keen eye to greed and black gold with the heartbreaking story of a young man who grew up, lived, and suddenly died on the oil patch in western Wyoming. Reviewed by Kevin Carollo

The Wounded Researcher: Research with Soul in Mind
Robert D. Romanyshyn
Anyone who reads more than a few pages of this book is by default someone interested in doing “re-search,” as Romanyshyn describes “the unfinished business in the soul of the work, the unsaid weight of history in the work that waits to be said.” Reviewed by Joel Weishaus

Wallace Stegner and the American West
Philip L. Fradkin
An award-winning California journalist takes on the large subject of the iconic Stegner, who grew up on the frontier in the early parts of the century and became one of the first teachers of creative writing in America. Reviewed by Ryder W. Miller

Sacred Sea: A Journey to Lake Baikal
Peter Thomson
“Yikes!” is evidently an insufficient response to discovering that the deepest lake in the world, known also to be the purest, is undergoing alarming biochemical shifts in response to human activities. Reviewed by Eliza Murphy

American Drama in the Age of Film
Zander Brietzke
Brietzke comprehensively and concretely parses out the idiomatic values of drama and film to show the former’s continued relevance in modern culture, while honoring the latter. Reviewed by Justin Maxwell

Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968
Norman Mailer
In this fortieth anniversary reissue, we see a writer at the peak of his literary and journalistic talents, putting himself in direct relationship to the events of the day. Reviewed by C. Natale Peditto

Big Enough to Be Inconsistent: Abraham Lincoln Confronts Slavery and Race
George Fredrickson
Fredrickson, a pioneer of the comparative method of historical study, adeptly balances Lincoln as saintly anti-slavery advocate and racist. Reviewed by Spencer Dew

Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the 1960s Anti-War Movement
Carl Oglesby
As a participating and presiding member, Oglesby relates the highs, the lows, and eventual destruction of the radicalized Students for a Democratic Society. Reviewed by Robert Zaller

The Argument: Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics
Matt Bai
What new argument about government will drive American politics? This book chronicles Bai’s attempt to understand the new progressives and the ideas that motivate them. Reviewed by Bob Hussey

Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life
Edited by Louise Antony
Antony brings together a collection of essays by people struggling to understand their place in the world without the crutch of religion, with mixed results. Reviewed by Simon Waxman

The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild
Craig Childs
Childs essays depict encounters with animals in the wild in likely and unlikely places, celebrating the resilience of life. Reviewed by by Bob Hussey

The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature
Jonathan Rosen
A rich and expansive meditation on birdwatching goes beyond binoculars to explore the philosophical and near-religious exhilaration of communing with the birds. Reviewed by Spencer Dew

REVIEWS: PHOTOGRAPHY

Suburban World: The Norling Photos
Brad Zellar
& Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes
Edited by Andrew Blauvelt
Two new art books find beauty in the bland and the mundane of American culture. Reviewed by Deborah Karasov

REVIEWS: GRAPHIC NOVELS

A People’s History of American Empire
Howard Zinn, Mike Konopacki, and Paul Buhle
This graphic novel of Howard Zinn’s seminal A People’s History of the United States updates the information found in the original and features the historian as a narrator and witness to the atrocities committed in the name of American power. Reviewed by Christopher Luna

Doom Patrol: Volumes 1-6
Grant Morrison, Richard Case, et al
Morrison is one of the most innovative writers of comics, and his idea-crammed virtues and vices can be seen in this superhero pastiche he wrote from 1989 through 1992. Reviewed by Ken Chen

Rain Taxi Online Edition, Summer 2008 | © Rain Taxi, Inc. 2008

Davis Schneiderman, Stephen Dixon, J.M. Coetzee, Jim Munroe, and many more...

INTERVIEWS

Trans-Avant-Garde: An Interview with Steve McCaffery
Interviewed by Ryan Cox
Though he would be among the first people to point out the inherent problems with the terminology, poet and scholar Steve McCaffery is one of the major architects of postmodern Canadian literature.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat: An Interview with Davis Schneiderman
Interviewed by Brian Whitener
Davis Schneiderman's work, which takes the conventions of postmodern fiction and pushes them one step further, has established him as a thoughtful and energetic presence in the experimental fiction scene.

REVIEWS: POETRY

Deed
Rod Smith
Smith’s Deed is the latest stop along the ongoing, expansionist railway of American innovative poetry. Reviewed by Noah Eli Gordon

It
Inger Christensen
This 1969 masterwork of experimental poetry by Danish poet Christensen depicts the beginning of life grown out of nothingness, an Oulipian kind of cosmology of life on earth. Reviewed by Douglas Messerli

Telegraph
Kaya Oakes
In her first book of poetry, Oakes details a transient and fervent existence, stemming from wayward road trips taken with her family as a child. Reviewed by Katie Fowley

sexoPUROsexoVELOZ and Septiembre: A Bilingual Edition of Books Two and Three of Dolores Dorantes
Dolores Dorantes
These two books combined in a bilingual edition continue Dorantes’s ongoing project of self-creation, conflating subject and object. Reviewed by Mark Tursi

Dog Girl
Heidi Lynn Staples
There is something of “Jabberwocky” in Staples’s second full collection of poetry, as she revels in homonyms and puns. Reviewed by Katie Fowley

The Burning Mirror
Kerry Shawn Keys
Keys’s art thrives on freedom of association, and this book is a fitting introduction to his work. Reviewed by Robert Murray Davis

REVIEWS: FICTION

Song For Night
Chris Abani
Song for Night, Abani's powerful new novella, recounts a fifteen-year-old soldier’s voiceless journey through a hell-scape of war. Reviewed by Joel Turnipseed

Love Without
Jerry Stahl
Filled with seemingly cheap thrills that reveal unusual originality and depth, Jerry Stahl’s latest collection of short stories throws the reader into scenes of vulgar eroticism and vulnerable uncertainty. Reviewed by Anna Rockne

All Over
Roy Kesey
Dzanc Books launches their label with this debut collection of stories by a truly innovative and inventive new writer on the scene. Reviewed by Blake Butler

Dahlia Season
Myriam Gurba
Overflowing with teen angst, these fictions set in early ’90s Southern California explore the culture and desires of young Hispanic women. Reviewed by Jacklyn Attaway

Catholic Boys
Philip Cioffari
In his debut novel, Cioffari delves into a murder mystery involving a Catholic schoolboy and an intricate web of lies spun from some of the highest members of the church. Reviewed by Donald Lemke

Meyer
Stephen Dixon
Dixon’s latest novel chronicles the 68-year-old Meyer’s dissatisfaction with what he’s been writing and the ever-encroaching certainty of death. Reviewed by T.K. Dalton

Diary of a Bad Year
J.M. Coetzee
This nimble metafiction addresses the challenges an intellectual writer faces as he tries to convey his thoughts accurately. Reviewed by Spencer Dew

The Dog Said Bow-Wow
Michael Swanwick
Swanwick’s latest story collection shows off his impressive world-building skills and imaginative use of genre tropes. Reviewed by Kristin Livdahl

Soucouyant: A Novel of Forgetting
David Chariandy
Chariandy’s first book is also a novel of remembering, as the narrator copes with his mother’s early-onset dementia. Reviewed by Kristin Thiel

The New Space Opera: All New Stories of Science Fiction Adventure
Edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan
While not all the stories here glitter, those that do are worth the ticket to admission in this opera. Reviewed by Alan DeNiro

REVIEWS: YOUNG ADULT FICTION

Unwind
Neal Shusterman
Shusterman imagines a near-future America after a Civil War that pitted pro-life and pro-choice factions, resulting in a horrific compromise with ramifications for disaffected youth. Reviewed by Kelly Everding

REVIEWS: NONFICTION

The Neutral: Lecture Course at the College de France (1977-1978)
Roland Barthes
In this transcription of a lecture course, Barthes brings forth the Neutral as that which “baffles the paradigm,” suspending the conflictual basis of discourse by outplaying the various binaries ordinarily imposed by language. Reviewed by Spencer Dew

9/11: The Culture of Commemoration
David Simpson
Simpson here explores the cultural matrix of sociological, juridical, and institutional segregation to examine the complex and paradoxical treatment of the events and images of September 11, 2001 and after. Reviewed by Brian Bergen-Aurand

Merton & Buddhism: Realizing the Self
Edited by Bonnie Bowman Thurston
This collection of essays is a valuable contribution to Merton studies as it attempts to reconcile Merton’s fascination with Buddhism and his Christianity. Reviewed by Joel Weishaus

Beautiful Enemies: Friendship and Postwar American Poetry
Andrew Epstein
Beautiful Enemies offers a study of friendship and postwar American poetry by focusing on three poets: Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, and Amiri Baraka. Reviewed by Elizabeth Robinson

Vanishing America: In Pursuit of Our Elusive Landscapes
James Conaway
Vanishing America laments the cancerous spread of development, of “nihilistic, temporarily enriching transformations” that destroy public land and wreck the cultural heritage of unique places. Reviewed by Spencer Dew

Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness
B. Alan Wallace
As a physicist and Buddhist, Wallace reveals the importance of consciousness as an integral factor in the evolution and workings of our objective world. Reviewed by Kelly Everding

Foreskin’s Lament
Shalom Auslander
Frank, honest, and darkly humorous, Auslander’s memoir of escaping his Orthodox Jewish upbringing leaves no neuroses unturned. Reviewed by Jessica Bennett

Faint Praise: The Plight of Book Reviewing in America
Gail Pool
Pool maps the decline of book reviewing in America and offers suggestions to enhance and improve the art of literary criticism. Reviewed by Marcus A. Banks

REVIEWS: GRAPHIC NOVELS

The Arrival
Shaun Tan
In this stunning wordless graphic novel, a young man immigrates to a new and strange country to seek a better life for his family. Reviewed by David A. Berona

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier
Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill
Moore and O’Neill return to the extraordinary individuals whose adventures they chronicled in two previous graphic novels and expand their vision to encompass the whole history of their world. Reviewed by Rudi Dornemann

Therefore Repent!
Jim Munroe and Salgood Sam
In his first graphic novel, writer Jim Munroe tweaks one prominent strand of contemporary politico-religious imagination, following the story of the unfortunates who were left behind after the Rapture. Reviewed by Spencer Dew

Ghost Stories: Essex County Volume 2
Jeff Lemire
The second volume in Lemire’s graphic novel trilogy is a moving study of isolation and regret, following the story of two brothers growing up in Essex County, Ontario. Reviewed by Donald Lemke

Rain Taxi Online Edition, Winter 2007/2008 | © Rain Taxi, Inc. 2007/2008

Michael Hardt, John Burdett, Attila Jozsef, Warren Ellis, Ann Hamilton, and more...

INTERVIEWS

Talking into Being: The Complete Interview with Michael Hardt
Interview by Leonard Schwartz
Excerpted in the Fall 2007 print edition, Leonard Schwartz’s interview with Empire philosopher Michael Hardt is now offered in its entirety here.

Thailand & Ghosts: An Interview with John Burdett
Interview by Wipanan Chaichanta
Burdett, creator of three arresting novels set in Bangkok featuring the unforgettable detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, discusses his take on the unique culture of Thailand.

FEATURES

Hero Epics Then and Now
Essay by Eric Lorberer
Lorberer explores the roots of the superhero epic with the release of two volumes of Jack Kirby's 1970s Fourth World comics series, comparing it to a new epic on the scene, 52.

REVIEWS: POETRY

A Transparent Lion
Attila József
József’s reputation as Hungary’s greatest 20th-century poet extends far beyond his homeland and his time, as this exceptional collection of his poems reveals. Reviewed by John Bradley

Apostrophe
Bill Kennedy and Darren Wershler-Henry
Apostrophe offers an absorbing, almost hypnotic, expanse of found sentences from the Internet, all of which begin with “you are.” Reviewed by Holly Dupej

a half-red sea
Evie Shockley
In her first full-length collection, the poet presents public and private histories through a series of narratives, lyrical monologues, fantastic episodes, and imagined dialogues. Reviewed by Nancy Kuhl

We Are Here
Niels Hav
This slim, respectably translated selection of poems into English represents an award-winning Danish poet at his mildly quirky and wryly humorous best. Reviewed by Poul Houe

Citizen Of
Christian Hawkey
Hawkey sustains his second collection of poetry with a wit that emerges from the contemporary bog of poetic near-humor. Reviewed by Samuel Amadon

Pepper Spray
Paul Martínez Pompa
& The Night Tito Trinidad KO’ed Ricardo Mayorga
Kevin A. González
Momotombo Press presents two explosive poetry collections from emerging Latino writers. Reviewed by Craig Santos Perez

REVIEWS: FICTION

Death of a Murderer
Rupert Thomson
In Thomson’s latest novel, storylines sprout, self-delusions fester, and interpretations tangle with ambiguities. Reviewed by Matthew Cheney

Crooked Little Vein
Warren Ellis
Ellis’s dark reworking of America mixes absurd fantasies with real horrors, though this prose novel falls short of the truly nightmarish. Reviewed by Spencer Dew

Part of the World
Robert Lopez
Lopez explores the mundanity of life in this mesmerizing, Beckettian, and irresistible novel. Reviewed by Blake Butler

Russian Lover and Other Stories
Jana Martin
The women of these stories use whatever they have available to survive the dangerous world Martin concocts. Reviewed by Spencer Dew

Then We Came to the End
Joshua Ferris
In his debut novel, Ferris provides a uniquely concentrated expression of what it feels like to work in an office. Reviewed by Lucy Biederman

REVIEWS: NONFICTION

How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter To The Greatest Teen Magazine Of All Time
Kara Jesella and Marisa Meltzer
If a work of art says to us (as Rilke put it) “You must change your life,” does any published writing that has changed our lives count as a work of art? If so, Sassy has a durable claim. Reviewed by Stephen Burt

You’ll Be Okay: My Life with Jack Kerouac
Edie Kerouac-Parker
Kerouac-Parker’s new memoir is a warm, intimate, and colorful portrait of the embryonic journey of Jack Kerouac, whose seminal novel On the Road celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Reviewed by Mark Terrill

Phyllis Webb and the Common Good: Poetry/Anarchy/Abstraction
Stephen Collis
Poet, broadcaster, public intellectual, recluse, artist—Phyllis Webb has been appearing, and disappearing, from public life for more than half a century, and Collis avoids any attempt to pin down this elusive poet. Reviewed by Kate Eichhorn

REVIEWS: VACUM ATTACHMENT

Axial Stones: An Art of Precarious Balance
George Quasha and Carter Ratcliff
Quasha’s extraordinary sculptures place natural stones in a state of breathtakingly improbable balance. Reviewed by Deborah Karasov

Time
Christian Boltanski
In this catalogue of stirring work, Boltanski explores the failure of family memory through a collection of WWII photographs of lost and displaced children. Reviewed by Jan Estep

Ann Hamilton: An Inventory of Objects
edited by Joan Simon
Alluring in both form and content, this collection investigates the nearly two decades of object-making by Hamilton, who is recognized more widely for her site-responsive and often temporary installations. Reviewed by Mason Riddle

Rain Taxi Online Edition, Fall 2007 | © Rain Taxi, Inc. 2007

Irvine Welsh, Stephen Vincent, Mary Ann Caws, Cesar Vallejo, and more...

FEATURES

An Ego Strong Enough to Live: Translating César Vallejo
Essay by Clayton Eshleman
Clayton Eshleman discusses the psychic struggle and lasting impact of translating Vallejo's uniquely challenging work.

INTERVIEWS

The "C" Word: Chef? An Interview with Irvine Welsh
Interviewed by Emily Cook and Eric Lorberer
Welsh extrapolates on the many questions his latest book raises—questions of Scottish identity, feminism, witchcraft, and why Americans find the word "cunt" to be offensive, among other things. Answers best read in Scottish brogue.

A Walk with Stephen Vincent
Interviewed by Francis Raven
An influential presence in the poetry scene of San Francisco, Stephen Vincent has been publishing his poetry since the 1960s and is the former editor and publisher of Momo's Press.

The Glories of Eccentricity: A Conversation with Mary Ann Caws
Interviewed by Matthew Cheney
Caws maintains that for her the term eccentric is “an approbation rather than a criticism” and “the very opposite of pejorative."

REVIEWS: FICTION

The Pesthouse
Jim Crace
In his latest novel, this English author of “hallucinatory skill” imagines a bleak future for America. Reviewed by Kelly Everding

Bed
& Eeeee Eee Eeee
Tao Lin
A novel and a collection of short stories mark a dual fiction debut for this ironic/earnest nihilist/moralist. Reviewed by Spencer Dew

Adam Haberberg
Yasmina Reza
A solemn and alienating tone permeates this new novel from the playwright of Art. Reviewed by Ryan Rase McCray

The Lives of Mapmakers
Alicia Conroy
A short-story collection that imagines worlds of loss and uncertainty in beautifully woven narratives. Reviewed by Katie Harger

The Golem: And the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague
Yudl Rosenberg
In this first complete English translation of the classic tales, a Jewish history lesson comes in the form of entertaining fables. Reviewed by Jessica Bennett

Potato Tree
James Sallis
In this impressive story collection, inanimate objects come to life, jaguars haunt bedrooms, and orchids compose epic poetry. Reviewed by Morris Collins

Getting to Know You
David Marusek
Thirteen years in the making, this collection of short stories and novellas attest to the Alaskan science fiction author’s meticulousness. Reviewed by Rod Smith

Sharp Objects
Gillian Flynn
The gritty particulars of a small Missouri town provide more than enough horror in this novel, even if there were not a killer on the loose mutilating young girls. Reviewed by Spencer Dew

REVIEWS: YOUNG ADULT

The Mislaid Magician or Ten Years After
Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer
The third novel in an epistolary series revolves around the conflicts between magic and railroads. Reviewed by William Alexander

REVIEWS: NONFICTION

White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s
Joe Boyd
The legendary producer, who worked with everyone from Muddy Waters to ABBA, debunks the alleged irrelevance of an era. Reviewed by Mark Terrill

American Artists, Jewish Images
Matthew Baigell
The foremost scholar of 20th century Jewish art offers an introduction to a still emerging field of study. Reviewed by Daniel Morris

Pushing Ultimates: Fundamentals of Authentic Self-Knowledge
Lew Paz
A philosophical travelogue provides modern-day encouragement for those seeking enlightenment. Reviewed by Jaye Beldo

The End of the Line: How Overfishing is Changing the World and What We Eat
Charles Clover
A journalist and sports fisherman sounds the alarm about the perilous state of the world's fish supply. Reviewed by Ryder Miller

This Year You Write Your Novel
Walter Mosley
Just as the title of this book can be read as motivation or punishment, this “how-to” book can also be read as a “don’t-hold-your-breath” guide to imperfection. Reviewed by Kevin Carollo

The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art
Greg Bottoms
In this travel narrative exploring the Outsider Art of the South, Bottoms sets out on a search for the whereabouts of the micro-thin, semi-permeable membrane separating religious ecstasy and madness. Reviewed by Eliza Murphy

REVIEWS: GRAPHIC NOVELS

Casanova
Matt Fraction and Gabriel Bá
Image Comics presents the first installment of this high-energy mash-up that reads like a comics version of Sgt. Pepper. Reviewed by Rudi Dornemann

Alias the Cat
Kim Deitch
A post-modern graphic memoir that's laugh-out-loud funny from the author of Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Reviewed by Todd Robert Peterson

Stop Forgetting to Remember: The Autobiography of Walter Kurtz
Peter Kuper
In this self-parody of a cartoonist’s life, Kuper presents himself as alter-ego Walter Kurtz in a face-to-face dialogue with the reader. Reviewed by David A. Beronä

REVIEWS: POETRY

The Ecstasy of Capitulation
Daniel Borzutzky
The second collection from Daniel Borzutzky energetically satirizes and lampoons politics and convention. Reviewed by Vincent Czyz

Dérive
Bruna Mori, paintings by Matthew Kinney
Lyrically mapping New York City's “psychogeographical contours,” Mori teaches us Debord's lessons of drifting. Reviewed by Craig Perez

Radish King
Rebecca Loudon
Musician-poet Loudon crafts poetry of dark rhythms that is both frustrating and compelling. Reviewed by Rebecca Weaver

Bone Pagoda
Susan Tichy
In her first collection in twenty years, Tichy investigates the narratives of the Vietnam War. Reviewed by Nancy Kuhl

Sightings: Selected Works
Shin Yu Pai
A selection from an accomplished younger poet demonstrates her intimate and fierce poetics. Reviewed by Lucas Klein

Broken World
Joseph Lease
Musical poetry on discordant themes from a writer influenced by Whitman and Kabbala. Reviewed by Noah Eli Gordon

The Wife of the Left Hand
Nancy Kuhl
The poet's first full-length collection delivers well-crafted “dramas of desire and repression.” Reviewed by James Berger

Way More West: New & Selected Poems
Ed Dorn
This collection solidifies Dorn’s status as a significant and controversial poet whose voice is still relevant and resonant today. Reviewed by Mark Terrill

Rain Taxi Online Edition, Summer 2007 | © Rain Taxi, Inc. 2007

Neil Gaiman, Ben Fountain, Chris Adrian, Thomas Pynchon and more...

INTERVIEWS

Fragile Things: An Interview with Neil Gaiman
Interviewed by Eric Lorberer
In the complete Rain Taxi interview, the prolific and enchanting fantasist talks about publishing, Peanuts, and porn.

Brief Encounters with Ben Fountain
Interviewed by Shin Yu Pai
The author of Brief Encounters With Che Guevara discusses leaving law, getting published, and researching stories in Haiti.

Passion and Precision: An Interview with Clare Dudman
Interviewed by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
The underappreciated Welsh author of 98 Reasons for Being talks about how she transforms history and science into fiction.

Gina Frangello
Interviewed by Jeanie Chung
Other Voices and OV Books editor Frangello discusses her first novel and more.

FEATURES

Making Comics and Communities: The Influence of Scott McCloud
Essay by William Alexander
William Alexander investigates some practical applications of Making Comics, the latest book by the guru of comics theory.

The Beat Goes On: Celebrating Allen Ginsberg
Reviewed by Christopher Luna
Fall 2006 was the 50th anniversary of the publication of "Howl," an occasion marked by the appearance of three new books illuminating the life and work of Allen Ginsberg.

Postcard from Rome: "Shakespeare" at the Teatro Furio Camillo
Essay by Linda Lappin
The king of Naples, a shipwreck, an alchemist, and a trunk full of waterlogged pages... sound familiar? Linda Lappin recounts a theatrical experience in Italy.

REVIEWS: FICTION

Against the Day
Thomas Pynchon
The virtuoso author turns in a madcap, uneven picaresque. Reviewed by Scott Esposito

The Children's Hospital
Chris Adrian
Eluding the end of the world in a children's hospital-cum-ark, survivors adapt, struggle, fail, and succeed in a humorous and insightful second novel. Reviewed by Kelly Everding

Escalator
Michael Gardiner
Horror lurks beneath the banal in a exploration of alienation and automation by the Scottish theorist Michael Gardiner. Reviewed by Spencer Dew

The Disappearance: A Novella and Stories
Ilan Stavans
In a collection of two short stories and one novella, the cultural critic fashions uncanny examinations of Latino-Jewish culture. Reviewed by Katie Harger

Vera & Linus
Jesse Ball and Thordis Björnsdottir
A cross between the Brothers Grimm and the Marquis de Sade, this collaboration explores the horrors of childhood. Reviewed by Laird Hunt

Floating Clouds
Fumiko Hayashi
Hayashi tells the story of two on-and-off lovers who meet in French Indochina near the end of World War II. Reviewed by Scott Bryan Wilson

Bottomfeeder
B. H. Fingerman
A fresh take on the vampire mythos, this is the story of a reluctant vampire stuck in a dead-end job, dining on the dregs of humanity. Reviewed by Jessica Bennett

The Potbellied Virgin
Alicia Yànez Cossìo
This 1985 novel, recently translated into English, recounts the lives of two families in a small Andean town. Reviewed by Kristin Thiel

REVIEWS: POETRY

Twenty-One After Days
Lisa Lubasch
Lubasch's experiments in form and substance make for an attentive, graceful book both to read and to gaze upon. Reviewed by Amanda Nadelberg

Angle of Yaw
Ben Lerner
Lerner's second collection is a quirky, "Benjamin-esque," and philosophically hefty pastiche. Reviewed by Joyelle McSweeney

Portrait of the Artist as a White Pig
Jane Gentry
Think globally, write locally: the Kentuckian poet Gentry uses a personal approach to address broader issues. Reviewed by Matthew Duffus

Poeta en San Francisco
Barbara Jane Reyes
Reye's second collection of poems explores the translatable and untranslatable collisions of writing self and culture. Reviewed by Craig Perez

Everything Preserved: Poems 1955-2004
Landis Everson
In this collection of poems spanning five decades, the daily world feeds insights which, mixing innocence and experience, might be called "divine." Reviewed by Adam Fieled

Astoria
Malena Mörling
This book of poems provides a manual to this world's experience, traveling at the speed of light, or memory. Reviewed by Miguel Murphy

I Have Not Been Able to Get Through to Everyone
Anna Moschovakis
Moschovakis questions authority, in particular the authority of language, in this engaging volume of poems and sequences. Reviewed by Jason Ranon Uri Rotstein

REVIEWS: NONFICTION

The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality
Walter Benn Michaels
Given blurred cultural distictions and in the absence of true biological differences, what does race really mean in America today? Reviewed by Brigitte Frase

A Faithful Existence: Reading, Memory, and Transcendence
Forrest Gander
A gifted poet and translator shares appreciations, close readings, and meditations, showing how poetry can be an ethical struggle. Reviewed by Elizabeth Robinson

Feeling Like a Kid: Childhood and Children's Literature
Jerry Griswold
The director of the National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature delivers a warm, if old-fashioned, analysis of a broad and varied field. Reviewed by Emma Shafer

Real Sofistikation: Essays on Poetry and Craft
Tony Hoagland
The poet's first collection of essays lets the master of metaphor shine in another genre. Reviewed by J. MacNeill Miller

Blackstock's Collections: The Drawings of an Artistic Savant
Gregory L. Blackstock
Blackstock's painstaking drawings catalogue the mundane in an attempt to exert some order over the chaos of things. Reviewed by Eliza Murphy

Sailor on Snowshoes: Tracking Jack London's Northern Trail
Dick North
North takes the reader on an expedition to follow the travails of Jack London during the year he spent searching for gold in the Klondike. Reviewed by Ryder W. Miller

What Did I Do Last Night?: A Drunkard's Tale
Tom Sykes
Sykes recounts the do's and don'ts of drinking in this humorous memoir. Reviewed by Matthew Schneeman

REVIEW: GRAPHIC NOVELS

Y: The Last Man
Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, José Marzán, Jr., et al.
As the series gains momentum towards what's sure to be a stunning finale, we take a look at where this post-apocalyptic road-trip has gone so far. Reviewed by Rudi Dornemann

REVIEW: MIXED GENRE

The Night I Dropped Shakespeare on the Cat
John Olson
As hard to classify as it is to put down, Olson's latest book offers streams of words that span the distances between poetry, fiction, essay, and memoir. Reviewed by Ellen Twadell

Rain Taxi Online Edition, Winter 2006-2007 | © Rain Taxi, Inc. 2006-2007

Raymond Federman, Letters to Poets, Alan Moore and more...

INTERVIEW

Raymond Federman: An Inner-view
Interviewed by David Moscovich
"Being in the same room with Raymond Federman is a lot like reading one of his books—sprinkled with double-dashes, at times conspicuously free of punctuation."

FEATURES

Letters to Poets: Conversations About Poetics, Politics, and Community
Letters anthologized by Dana Teen Lomax and Jennifer Firestone
Rain Taxi presents the first exchanges between two poet pairs: Anselm Berrigan and John Yau, and Truong Tran and Wanda Coleman.

REVIEWS: POETRY

An Earth of Time
Jean Grosjean
translated by Keith Waldrop
Grosjean, a Roman Catholic priest who wrote this book while incarcerated in a Nazi stalag during World War II, struggled with religion and his personal relationship to God. Reviewed by Mark Tursi

America (A Poem)
John Kinsella
Australian poet Kinsella takes on America from an immigrant's point of view, wrestling with capitalism, identity, and opportunity. Reviewed by Julia Istomina

Cole Porter: Selected Lyrics
Edited by Robert Kimball
Even educated fleas recognize Cole Porter as a ubiquitous presence in American culture. Now the Library of America has assembled a selection of his lyrics. Reviewed by Spencer Dew

Post Bling Bling
Eileen Tabios
In her new collection, Tabios investigates marketing culture through found and shared language in tightly defined moments. Reviewed by by Garin Cycholl

REVIEWS: FICTION

Panda Diaries
Alex Kuo
A quixotic novel, Panda Diaries is a political self-examination of China that includes a mail-delivering panda bear and an alienated government official. Reviewed by Lucas Klein

Zed
Elizabeth McClung
In this engagingly hellish first book, McClung paints a post-apocalyptic world in which the protagonist survives by trading everything from toasters to drugs to information. Reviewed by Rod Smith

Passion
Brane Mozetič
translated by Tamara Soban
Mozetic avoids writing about the kind of sanitized homosexuals like those on TV's Will and Grace, lending a disquieting air to this collection of sketches about passion. Reviewed by Robert Murray Davis

Sex, Blood and Rock 'n' Roll
Kimberly Warner-Cohen
A normal (by East Village standards) young woman becomes increasingly haunted by dreams of murdering men in this disturbing novel. Reviewed by Tim W. Brown

REVIEWS: NONFICTION

The Shape of Things To Come: Prophecy and the American Voice
Greil Marcus
This diffuse, frustrating, and occasionally brilliant book continues in the vein of cultural criticism that Greil Marcus has made his own over the last thirty years. Reviewed by Michael Lindgren

Essential Muir: A Selection of John Muir's Best Writing
Edited by Fred D. White
A useful sampler from a much larger oeuvre, this selection picks the best of this naturalist's reveries on foliage and fauna. Reviewed by Spencer Dew

Transgender Rights
Edited by Paisley Currah, Richard M. Juang, and Shannon Price Minter
These essays mix a sad and angry acknowledgment of the difficulties facing transgender people with an optimism born from experiencing real progress over the past decade. Reviewed by Matthew Cheney

REVIEWS: GRAPHIC NOVELS

It's no secret that comics aren't just for kids anymore, but we present here two reviews of graphic novels that are for adults ONLY.

Lost Girls
Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie
Continuing to set the bar high for graphic novels, Moore and co-conspirator Gebbie set out to create a pornographic work that rewrites three treasured icons of children's literature. Reviewed by Eric Lorberer

Sticky
Dale Lazarov and Steve MacIsaac
& In Bed with David and Jonathan
Tom Bouden
Two homo-erotic graphic novels will suck you in but good. Reviewed by Jay Besemer

Rain Taxi Online Edition, Fall 2006 | © Rain Taxi, Inc. 2006

Daniel Handler, Colin MacInnes, Rick Veitch and more...

INTERVIEWS

Adverbially Yours: An Interview with Daniel Handler
By Kelly Everding and Eric Lorberer
The complete Rain Taxi interview with the author of Adverbs and A Series of Unfortunate Events . . . really.

REVIEWS: FICTION

The London Novels
Colin MacInnes
In the three novels collected here, MacInnes portrays innocents attempting to navigate the underbelly of 1950’s London. Reviewed by Douglas Messerli

Paraspheres
Edited by Rusty Morrison and Ken Keegan
This anthology, as its subtitle “Extending Beyond the Spheres of Literary and Genre Fiction” suggests, challenges how we categorize literature—and collects some superb stories in the process. Reviewed by Alan DeNiro

Arbitrary Tales
Daniel Borzutzky
Borzutzky’s first collection of stories run playfully amok, confronting ideology and the lack thereof, and appropriating, sometimes demolishing, received literary forms. Reviewed by Christian TeBordo

Now You See It… Stories from Cokesville, PA
Bathsheba Monk
In her debut novel, Monk makes the fictional town of Cokesville the main character of the story, a rusted-out belt of humanity quickly approaching ghost town status. Reviewed by William Bush

You, Me, and the Insects
Barbara Henning
Henning follows the inner life of an artist and yoga enthusiast through stream-of-consciousness diaristic entries as she searches for a philosophy to live by. Reviewed by Kris Lawson

Wide Eyed
Trinie Dalton
Amidst the detritus of pop culture, moments of real pathos and power shine through in this collection of short stories. Reviewed by Ed Taylor

In the Forest of Forgetting
Theodora Goss
The stories in Theodora Goss’s first story collection enmesh the fantastic in the real, and the relationship between the two is often at the heart of her fiction. Reviewed by Rudi Dornemann

REVIEWS: NONFICTION

The Yage Letters Redux
William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg
In conjunction with the 50th anniversary of City Lights, the publisher has expanded this collection of correspondence between Burroughs and Ginsberg with previously unpublished material. Reviewed by Mark Terrill

In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country
Etel Adnan
A gorgeous, multi-layered prose poem/poetic essay, Adnan’s latest work represents a journey through the historical disasters and literary movements of the 20th century. Reviewed by Kim Jensen

Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds
Jesper Juul
As video games increasingly dominate Western popular culture and command more of the American leisure dollar than motion pictures, it’s only natural that theory-heads would attack the subject. Reviewed by James Ervin

The Week-End Book
Edited by Francis Meynell
This delightful miscellany has been resurrected after a 51-year nap, providing necessary information about sandwich bread and super novas. Don’t face the weekend without it! Reviewed by Amanda Nadelberg

REVIEWS: ART

The Cement War
Mark Steenerson
This book by musician, poet, artist, and photographer Mark Steenerson evokes the sloughs of despond so convincingly that it takes an effort to haul yourself out of them after closing the book. Reviewed by Glenn Gordon

REVIEWS: POETRY

Splay Anthem
Nathaniel Mackey
Two ongoing series interweave in Mackey’s latest, a mythic and cultural melange that shows the poet at the height of his powers. Reviewed by Grant Jenkins

I Love Artists
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
Covering four decades of writing, this new and selected poems offers a linguistic equivalent to the visual work of artists, using poetry to dramatize perception. Reviewed by Ben Lerner

nothing fictional but the accuracy or arrangement (she
Sawako Nakayasu
Nakayasu’s highly structured yet exploratory volume intrigues its reader from title to final page, considering questions of truth and artificiality. Reviewed by Dennis Barone

Saint Ghetto of the Loans, Grimoire
Gabriel Pomerand
Originally published in 1950, this neglected work of Lettrist metagraphics by provacateur Pomerand is now saved from obscurity. Reviewed by Geoffrey Cruickshank-Hagenbuckle

Whole Milk
Jim Goar
Goar’s Whole Milk proves that Grade A, vitamin-rich poetry doesn’t need to come in a fancy package to be enjoyable. Reviewed by Scott Glassman

REVIEWS: MIXED GENRE

PP/FF
Edited by Peter Conners
This anthology collects short pieces, the prose poems and flash fictions attributed by the title. Reviewed by Nava Renek

REVIEWS: GRAPHIC NOVELS

Can’t Get No
Crypto Zoo
& The Maximortal
The extreme, the cynical, the difficult… all find expression in the comics genius that is Rick Veitch. Reviewed by Eric Lorberer

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
Alison Bechdel
A departure from Bechdel's beloved Dykes to Watch Out For is a smart, moving, and serious memoir in comics form. Reviewed by Stephen Burt

Rain Taxi Online Edition, Summer 2006 | © Rain Taxi, Inc. 2006