GORGEOUS
Over the years, we've nested our
on-line reviews, poems, articles and essays
in as elegant a space possible ---
with appropriate type-face, headers,
photos, and background color,
the perfect pot-au-feu for our readers (and ourselves).
Here are a dozen pages selected from the past ---
ones that our editors believe to be most fetching.

NEW REVIEWS
War and Ideas
"This guy has
written thirteen books with
such scandalous ideas ...
and I am astounded that
the thought police haven't
descended on him,
harried him into
a lifetime exile."

From Here to Infinity
"He reminds us that
'the great physicist Lord Rutherford
averred that nuclear energy
was moonshine,'
and that Thomas Watson,
founder of IBM, said:
'I think there is
a world market for maybe
five computers.'"

The Best American Magazine Writing 2011
"Christopher Hitchens now
caught with cancer of the esophagus,
looking at it (and himself) with
his practiced, cynical eye,
managing to win our hearts ---
all the while not blotting out
his own feelings of despair."

Shockaholic
"Michael Jackson with his
abused, banged-up, butchered,
burned, bleached, blasted, braised,
fried, filleted, fricasseed, frappeéd,
flayed, pasted, plasticised, potted, stripped,
scalloped, scrofulated, slashed
and scrupulously over-doctored face."

Rez Life
"The Bureau of Indian Affairs
believes that there are 310 reservations
in the United States. The BIA
doesn't have a sure count
which may say something
about the BIA, or it may
say something about
the nature of reservations."

The Human Body Close-Up
"Do you know that
the fallopian tubes look like shaggy crappy
industrial motel carpets,
with little "goblet cells" that don't offer
a cup of mead but look like
little knobby burrs in the rug."

Cain
"In the process,
we find another Cain,
for Saramago has shaped him
into the new everyman,
looking at the world with a piercing clarity,
wondering how it can be
so mad and cruel."

Great Reviews of the Past
Measuring The World
"How had he grown so old?
One didn't feel right any more,
one didn't see right any more,
and one thought at a snail's pace.
Aging wasn't a tragedy.
It was a farce."

LETTERS
Neither/Nor

MORE LETTERS
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Tattoos
You're a Donkey

EVEN MORE LETTERS
Letters We Never Finished Reading
$10,000,000 in Iraq

ARTICLES
Recherche du Temps Perdu
"One day, early in
what I eventually noticed
was the 21st century,
the monster lying on my lab bench
twitched into life and
asked me for a cigarette.
Nobody smokes any more,
I told it, It's bad
for you."

READINGS
Is civil war going out of style?
I consider the general improvement
in the quality of government
to be a key factor in
the decline of civil war.
But whatever the reason for the decline,
it seems possible (though far from certain)
that civil war may be
going out of style.

Rambo's Vital Statistics
"Number of bad guys
killed by Rambo
with his shirt on"
"Number of bad guys
killed by Rambo
with his shirt off"
"Total number of bad guys
killed by Rambo
no matter how attired"

POETRY
Last Spring
"A drowned drayman was hoisted on to the slab.
Someone had jammed a lavender aster
between his teeth.
As I made the incision up from the chest
with a long knife
under the skin
to cut out tongue and gums..."

Static Poems
"Feel it --- but remember, millennia have felt it ---
the sea and the beasts and the mindless stars
wrestle it down today as ever ---"

THE OFFICIAL RALPH
Paradox-of-the-Month

GENERAL INDEX
All the back-issues of RALPH,
including titles of books under review,
along with author, subject, and publisher,
plus links to readings, articles, and poems
that have appeared on-line
since 1994.

A PITHY SAMPLE
of our most notorious reviews
as collected in the hard-copy
"FOLIO"

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