by Alexander Dickow On November 18, 1978, in a gated religious settlement in Guyana, 918 people were poisoned to death at the behest of the preacher Jim Jones. The notorious cyanide poisoning became known as the Jonestown Massacre. Fred D’Aguiar’s Children of Paradise (Harper, $25.99) tells the story of impending disaster at Jonestown from the […]
Terence Hawkins C&R Press ($19) by Jennifer Maritza McCauley Terence Hawkins, the author of The Rage of Achilles, tackles everything from race to privacy rights in his newest book, American Neolithic. Set in a dystopian New York, American Neolithic follows Blingbling, a secretly literate Neanderthal, and Raleigh, Blingbling’s lawyer. In Hawkins’s world, Homeland Security controls […]
Rodrigo de Souza Leão Translated by Zoë Perry and Stefan Tobler And Other Stories ($15.95) by Douglas Messerli Brazilian writer Rodrigo de Souza Leão’s All Dogs Are Blue is like no other book in the world. That is not to say it is entirely original; its many literary and social references, including the author’s own […]
D. Foy Two Dollar Radio ($16.50) by Joseph Salvatore In his 1993 essay “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction,” David Foster Wallace defended a certain poem’s reference to Dick Clark, saying that, though it lacked “context,” it was “a reference we all, each of us, immediately get.” The “we all, each of us” with […]
INTERVIEWS Arrangements of Language: An Interview with Burt Kimmelman The author of eight collections of poetry and numerous critical essays, Burt Kimmelman speaks to his influences and the mechanics of language in his work. interviewed by Eric Hoffman Pieces of Sky an interview with J. Otis Powell‽ Proudly influenced by the Black Arts Movement, Powell‽ […]
Murray Farish Milkweed Editions ($16) by Andrea Wills Inappropriate Behavior, Murray Farish’s first story collection, draws in the reader with a personal style and gets increasingly weirder until the finale flickers out. The narrative of each individual story is brimming and tumultuous, filled with recognizable people and places that find themselves on the brink of […]
Sigmund Freud, Minna Bernays, and the Meaning of Dreams Barry G. Gale AuthorHouse ($35.99) by Madelon Sprengnether It’s not easy to write about Freud, especially if you want to present him in a way that challenges received notions of his character. Freud’s official biography has him as a sober, self-disciplined, and sexually conservative investigator of […]
Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski McSweeney’s ($24) by Scott F. Parker The short stories of Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski’s Painted Cities are set less in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago than in the personalized dreamscape adapted from that place by the narrator, Jesse, who serves as a cipher for his environment. In the story “Sacrifice,” about Jesse’s struggles with his […]