45 More Stories by Donald Barthelme
Brian Howe01.24.08
You’d think for the latest collection from Donald Barthelme, the man who left us the sets 60 Stories and 40 Stories, he might have settled on an even medium of 50 stories, but alas, never predictable (and dead, so obviously not making these decisions), gives up his ghost again in a new collection just 5 short of mathematical balance. Fitting for a writer whose sentences of anal algebra glean amidst an illusion of sweet anarchy (that makes no sense, I am all blurbed out). Brian Howe reviews Flying to America: 45 More Stories, Turkish delight for the Barthelme completist. Cover image of B. by Danny Jock.
Imprints 5: Tom Perrotta, Gay Talese, Legs McNeil and Jennifer Osborne
Zach Baron11.15.07
In Zach Baron’s 5th Imprints, a monthly books column, his theme is sex, and as a befitting follow up to Mailer, it tends towards the macho, then twists back to the humorously male deprecating. Included in the review is Gay Talese’s classic Thy Neighbor’s Wife, Legs McNeil & Jennifer Osborne’s The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film, and a new one by "lapsed Roman Catholic" Tom Perrotta, The Abstinence Teacher, a novel which pits the prurient against the pious in a high school setting.
Review of Zeroville by Steve Erickson
Scott Bradfield10.25.07
Steve Erickson, in his latest novel Zeroville, invents a character who chooses to live his life as if he were a cinematic character. And who wouldn’t? In the movies, one can jump cut, laws of cause and effect are easily manipulated, and responsibility becomes malleable or mute. The problem for Erickson’s hero however, Scott Bradfield explains, is that he’s unknowingly driven by the causal concerns of his deft creator, Erickson the novelist. And all that drives Erickson, drives his characters…well, read and see.
IMPRINTS 4: Dana Vachon, Doug Stumpf and Jim Cramer
Zach Baron09.29.07
"Wealth rubs people in different ways," writes Zach Baron, who in his first IMPRINTS tackled DeLillo’s Falling Man. Baron isn’t through with the world of finance yet, and in IMPRINTS 4 he addresses two novels concerning the subject – Dana Vachon’s Mergers & Acquisitions and Doug Stumpf’s Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy. For good measure, he also gives a turn to CNBC’s seemingly insane Wall Street analyst Jim Cramer and his book Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich.
Reviews: Denis Johnson’s – Tree of Smoke and Richard Russo’s – Bridge of Sighs
Vikram Johri09.28.07
Vikram Johri reviews two new novel from old masters, Denis Johnson’s oddly epic Vietnam novel Tree of Smoke and Richard Russo’s memoir of childhood, Bridge of Sighs.
Reviews: Wayne Koestenbaum’s Hotel Theory and Masha Tupitsyn’s Beauty Talk & Monsters
Brian Pera08.26.07
Brian Pera reviews two new books: Wayne Koestenbaum’s Hotel Theory, a visually experimental work which juxtaposes two seemingly disparate texts, a collusion of dead stars and theory and into one cohesive package, and Masha Tupitsyn’s Beauty Talk & Monsters, a collection of observations, "Disguised as a series of short stories," of women seeking "apartness-as-refuge."
IMPRINTS 3: Andre Aciman and David Markson
Zach Baron07.31.07
Zach Baron reviews two novels of the summer romance variety (if you will) – Andre Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name and David Markson’s debut Wittgenstein’s Mistress. Not your average beach books…
IMPRINTS 2: Jeff Hobbs, Steven Hall, Joan Didion, Richard Yates, John Gregory Dunn…
Zach Baron06.28.07
Zach Baron’s second installment of Imprints runs the gamut from first-time novelists Jeff Hobbs (The Tourists, touted as "your ticket to snide fun in Manhattan" by USA Today) and Steven Hall (The Raw Shark Texts, about which critical quips have not been provided by Mr. Baron, or USA Today) to Joan Didion, Richard Yates, John Gregory Dunn, and Don DeLillo.
IMPRINTS 1: Don Delillo, Simon Rich and Joshua Ferris
Zach Baron05.19.07
Imprints is the debut of Zach Baron’s monthly book review column. This month Baron reviews Don Delillo’s newest, Falling Man, Simon Rich’s Ant Farm, and Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came To The End.
REVIEW: Philip Roth’s – Everyman
Sam Sacks05.23.06
As somewhat jaded, detached fans of Woody Allen’s personal life, Humbert Humbert, Gustave Von Aschenbach, etc… Fanzine doesn’t always wholly endorse its writers’ opinions as moral tautologies, yet we appreciate Sacks for beautifully nailing Philip Roth on a particular annoying tendency in American literature, the clichéd sexual braggadocio of the solopsistic veteran author.
