Tracy Quan, Kane X. Faucher, Al Franken, Lewis MacAdams, and more...

INTERVIEWS

Tracy Quan: Interview with a Sex Trade Novelist
Interviewed by Allan Vorda
A sex-worker turned novelist kisses and tells.

Polemarchy: Urdoxa, Codex Obscura and Beyond: An Interview with Kane X. Faucher
Interviewed by Astrid Jaida
Fiction and academic texts conflate in this Canadian author's unique novels.

Lewis MacAdams
Interviewed by Mary Kite
The Los Angeles River's greatest friend discusses the poet's role as activist.

Al Franken is Spreading the Truth (with Jokes)
Interviewed by Robert J. Nebel
Politics and laughs, of course.

REVIEWS: POETRY

The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch
Kenneth Koch
If Kenneth Koch had an artistic credo it was play hard at poetry, and it shows in this nearly 800-page tome of posthumously collected poems. Reviewed by Tim Keane

Here, Bullet
Brian Turner
These war poems preserve the shock of this experience while maintaining its humanity, collapsing the headlines and battle plans to the felt life of the individual. Reviewed by Joel Turnipseed

American Ghost Roses
Kevin Stein
Stein searches for "skewed beauty" borne of loss in this exceptional volume. Reviewed by Jean-Paul Pecqueur

Language Is
John Phillips
Phillips's highly condensed verse calls attention to language as a thing always already removed from that which it points toward. Reviewed by Richard Owens

Political Cactus Poems
Jonathan Skinner
An ambitious contribution to the field of contemporary experimental ecopoetics, Skinner's poetry understands that traditional nature poetry will not get us closer to the natural world. Reviewed by Francis Raven

REVIEWS: FICTION

Freddy and Fredericka
Mark Helprin
In his first novel in ten years, Helprin creates characters loosely based on Prince Charles and Princess Diana who attempt to conquer the United States for England. Reviewed by Nicole Duclos

Here is Where We Meet
John Berger
John Berger's latest displays the curiosity, originality, and daring that have made him one of the Western world's most engaging thinkers for nearly half a century. Reviewed by John Toren

Fledgling
Octavia E. Butler
Butler's Fledgling offers a new vision of the Other, one which is grounded as firmly in biology as it is in technological experimentation. Reviewed by Shannon Gibney

Fortification Resort
Lynn Crawford
Crawford draws from the deadpan mannerism of the French New Novelists in her newest collection of short stories, while maintaining a distinctly satirical edge. Reviewed by Jim Feast

REVIEWS: NONFICTION

Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson
Jonathan Coe
Distinguished novelist Jonathan Coe takes on the life of experimental writer B.S. Johnson, creating a spectacular work combining formal innovation with a humanistic portrayal of a compelling protagonist. Reviewed by Scott Esposito

Theory's Empire: An Anthology of Dissent
edited by Patai, Daphne and Will H. Corral
Theory's Empire announces itself as a long awaited and much belated response to the repressive orthodoxy of Theory emblazoned with a capital T. Reviewed by Raphael Allison

Innocent When You Dream: The Tom Waits Reader
Edited by Mac Montandon
The breadth and poetic power of Waits's musical vision is explored in these essays on the hip musical outsider. Reviewed by N. N. Hooker

Woody Guthrie Artworks
Edited by Steven Brower and Nora Guthrie
Woody Guthrie's visual art may have originated in the same place and time as the music that made him famous: Shorty Harris's drug store in Pampa, Texas, circa 1929. Reviewed by Charles Homans

REVIEWS: GRAPHIC NOVELS

Black Hole
Charles Burns
This graphic novel filled with freaks, violence, sex, drugs, and depravity, is also a literary novel filled with complexity, subtlety, and multi-layered symbolism. Reviewed by David Kennedy-Logan