R  A  L  P  H
        The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities        
Volume XV, Number 3 ---Mid-Winter, 1998 - 1999


NEW LISTINGS
Books that have been sent to us
within the last fortnight or so, including:
The Four Immigrants Manga, Alice Miller,
and Derrida --- the Hoover Vacuum Cleaner Man.


REVIEWS
Ancient Mexico and the Maya
"Don't leave gorgeous books like this on the coffee table.
Eviscerate them, hang the wonderful photographs on the refrigerator,
in the bathroom, on the telephone pole down the block ---
let the world in on these rich and tasty scenes."

Six Wars at a Time
"After reading this all-too-detailed life of
Yet Another Pained and Tedious Artist, we are suprised
that they didn't inscribe these words on his gravestone:
I'm not dead.
It's just a rumor.
Spread by my enemies.
So they can steal my ideas from me."

GREAT REVIEWERS OF THE PAST: H. L. MENCKEN
Civilization
"The typical Oklahoman is as barbarous as an Albanian or a man of Inner Mongolia.
He lives and dies on a low plane, pursuing sordid and ridiculous objectives
and taking his reward in hoggish ways. His political behavior
is that of a barbarian and his religious notions are almost savage.
Of urbanity he has no more than a traffic cop."

The Sound and the Fury
"Now I can write. Now I can make myself
a vase like that which the old Roman kept at his bedside
and wore the rim slowly away with kissing it."

Haiku
"They spoke no word.
The visitor, the host,
And the white chrysanthemum."


BRIEF REVIEWS
The Upper Valley, The Water Trade, Japan,
The Bakelite Fortune, and George Frazier


THE WEEKLY RALPH
"During the First World War, he expected an invasion by Germans,
and suggested that massive fortifications should be built at
Albany, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Vicksburg and Houston."


ARTICLES
What Do You Do When Your PCA Steals From You
"I think you'd like Raul. He's neat and pleasant and well-spoken.
He's always on time, and doesn't shoot drugs.
He is as good a Personal Care Attendant you could ever ask for.
And he steals me blind."

Oakalee-Oakalee
"They shouldn't be here. Nothing living should. Methane's here.
Can't smell it. But it's here. You can see it bubble in the ponds.
Climbs up from the goddamn garbage. Inflammable.
Terrible for birds."

The Robbery of American Broadcasting
"When they say, We deregulated broadcasting back in the '80s...
I'm wondering if we are talking about the same broadcasting.
Perhaps he is talking about radio and television in Silesia,
or Ouagadougou."


READINGS
A Home-Made Travelogue
"To show what degree of wanderlust the travelogue inspired,
not a single one of those who saw it on that occasion was available for a second showing.
They had all left town within forty-eight hours..."

Versailles and Cybernetics
"George Creel, a public relations man --- and I want you not to forget
that this man was a granddaddy of modern public relations ---
had an idea: the idea was that maybe the Germans would surrender
if we offered them soft armistice terms."

The Banana Pin Charm
"I stopped being the observer
and began to accept their supernatural world,
and my journey was never the same. In that single moment
I grew much closer to my experiences."

Sin, Remorse, Loneliness, and Religious Submission
"They looked at life as a chain of coincidences in which the only sure thing
was suffering. They threw the dice every morning to see whether
they should get up or stay in bed on their seaweed mattresses
and await the day's quota of pain."


POETRY
Blackbird
"Among twenty snowy mountains
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird."

That Bird!
"Here lies the blackbird
Here he lies.
The Lying Bird!"

On the Meeting of García-Lorca and Hart Crane
"Let's not invent a dialogue of such eloquence
that even the ants in your own house won't forget it."

Ma's Pain
"A circle of muscular light
over the hills in a boarded-up sky,
like an opening to let the pain leak out."


LETTERS
On the Treaty of Versailles, and "Betty."


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ARCHIVES
This will lead you back through previous issues of RALPH
(at least as far back as Winter, 1994 - 1995.)


TABLE OF CONTENTS
Titles, authors, and publishers
of all books reviewed in RALPH ---
arranged chronologically.
1995    1996    1997    1998

 

T H E  F A C T S
Submitting Books

The best way to get books to RALPH for review.
Submitting Reviews

Suggestions for would-be reviewers --- and payment schedule.
History

RALPH 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 Fund

Other activities of RALPH's godparents, including
Mho & Mho Works


Ralph R. Doister,Editor-In-Chief
Post Office Box 16719
San Diego CA 92176

poo@cts.com



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