R A L P H
  The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities Volume XIII, Number 2 --- Summer, 1997

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REVIEWS Great Reviewers from the Past: Virginia Woolf "To imagine any of the statues in Parliament Square
running, climbing, or even in a state of nudity
is not only impossible but also unseemly."
Tales from the Raj "It was a shock to be met after a calm and lengthy voyage
by the mass of humanity, the shouting and the jabbering,
the smells and the noise,the poverty and the squalor,
the cries of 'Bunby, Bunby.'"
Alexander A Potebnja's
Psycholinguistic Theory of Literature:
A Metacritical Inquiry "Sapir's distinction between morphemically opaque
and morphemically transparent words reminds us of
Potebnja's obsolete and living etymological derivatives."

Suggested Photo Spots "God knows what goes on in the wilds of Boise, Idaho. For some reason,
Boise State University turns out the weirdest, wolliest, most deranged books.
(One of their most recent was called Citizens for a Poodle-Free Montana.)"

Intervention in the Caribbean:
The Dominican Crisis of 1965 "In the old days, we never bothered about
disguising our invasions: we just moved the hell in,
and damned if we would let anyone tell us otherwise."

BRIEF REVIEWSAnimal Experimentation, Thomas Hoving,
The War on Drugs, and Prodigies

MORE BRIEF REVIEWSPare Lorentz, Young Love, Edgar Allen Poe,
Ploughshares, and James Merrill

A STORY
(A Wonderful Story)"Here's a wonderful story. The famous conductor,
Arturo Toscanini once received a letter from a gentleman
living in the mountains of Montana..."

ARTICLES How I Made $56,072,147.08 Overnight "It's a long story, how I made all that money.
Suffice it to say that I have, at last, and not a moment too soon,
come into the fortune I have deserved all these years.
It couldn't have happened to a better and more deserving fellow."

Some Thoughts on Blavatsky "She is informed, funny, sly, and knows
practically everything there is to know about the
obscure caves, temples, towns, dens, and rivers,
religions and peoples of India."

READINGS
Depression
"No one can put up with a manic, he assured me.
And once it's over and you're depressed and diagnosed and repentant,
husbands and wives and lovers depart anyway."
A Brief History of Mexico --- I
"Mexico was invented many years ago by the
Toltecs, Mixtecs, Med-Tecs, Hi-tecs, and Lo-Tecs."
Woodrow Wilson and WWI
"Had all the world been a school and Wilson its principal,
he would have been the greatest statesman in history.
But the world's governments and peoples
were not children obliged to obey him."

POETRY
Tootie-Fruit ME & Ass-Grasp LA
"All the babies were behaving as if they were moons,
Crawling out of seashells, stuffed blind as turkeys.
They smelt of the flat fever of love, with chancres
Born of Vanilla Bean WY, or Sewer Stop AK."
The Return of Der Führer
"On this the first of 1,000,000,000 scheduled visits
He is to return, they say, as one or more stinkbugs, chinchbugs,
Bedbugs, potato bugs, lightbugs, darkbugs, pediculus humanus,
Drosophila, carp weevils and jigger fleas."
The Flies
"Clearly, Miss Fly,
you fly graciously.
You draw yourself in the air,
draw yourself with a shadow
shifting on the walls."
Jesus Under Water
"I've been told that Jesus came on a dung-colored mule
His beard moving in the wind a bloody rose
His feet dripping on the thighs of a mule
They called Agnes Dei."
Love & the Flowers
"Love and the flowers
And age drawing on like a shawl.
It seems to me the days are coming shorter
And the sun takes such a crooked path
Down to the crooked sea."
LETTERS
Responses to our review of
Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
and The Vintage.

NEW LISTINGS
Franz Kafka boring us to death,
Bugs Under Your Skin,and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Titles, authors, and publishers
of all books reviewed in RALPH ---
arranged chronologically.
1995        1996        1997

T H E F A C T SSubmitting BooksThe best way to get books to RALPH for review.Submitting ReviewsSuggestions for would-be reviewers --- and payment schedule. HistoryRALPH didn't spring full-blown from the brows of the gods: We've been around (in different guises) for over twenty-five years. The Fessenden FundOther activities of RALPH's godparents, includingMho & Mho Works

Ralph R. Doister, Editor-In-ChiefPost Office Box 16719
San Diego CA 92176poo@cts.com
THE OFFICIAL RALPH
PARADOX-OF-THE-MONTH

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