The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities |
NEW LISTINGS
Spirit Flying (Without a License from the FAA);
Sam Walton, Christian Lawyers, Oil Tycoons;
and What To Do When All Your Hair Falls Out
REVIEWS
Ol' Strom
When I Was a German
BRIEF REVIEWS
THE WEEKLY RALPH
ARTICLES
Letter from the Southernmost Part of the Northern Hemisphere
READINGS
Grand Hotel
POETRY
Diary: Volume I
LETTERS
ARCHIVES
SUBSCRIBE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A three-part review of a new (and fascinating)
tome on Pacifica Radio and the
early history of KPFA
Part I Part II Part III
"Strom Thurmond, never very big in the brain department,
succumbed to uncontrolled priapism fifteen years ago.
He --- or what's left of his brain ---wrote this biography:
it's his farewell address."
"This one I picked up, started reading in the morning,
left it (reluctantly) to do some shopping, got back to it
in the late afternoon, and stayed with it until three in the morning ---
and you know I hate losing my beauty sleep."
Harry Truman's Upset, Holland at War,
Phèdre, the Great Dismal Swamp, and
the Booger Prize
"Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way
of having a bad time which has been devised.
It is the only form of adventure in which you put on your clothes
at Michaelmas and keep them on until Christmas."
Letter from France
Part I
To do this one has
to present a photo of oneself, and I do not photograph.
Like a vampire or
a sub-atomic particle, I produce only a sort of fuzzy track on the
photographic emulsion.
It is only through this mysterious property that I
have been able
to evade the police of three continents.
Part III
"It must be the sun that drives a sane man crazed, so crazed that
he suddenly rises up in a black fury in the Paraiso cantina, overturning
the cheap thin metal tables, smashing his glass of mescal
on the floor, grabbing at his machete,
slashing at everyone within reach."
A Train Ride With a Member of the SS
"I belonged to what is called an Einsatzkommando, an extermination squad
--- so I know. What do you say when I tell you that a little boy,
no older than my youngest brother, before such a killing,
stood there to attention and asked me Do I stand straight enough, Uncle?''
"She's full
of fun. She never leaves a hotel
without doing something first in a
wardrobe or drawer,
just to leave a little keepsake with the chambermaid
who will have to wipe it up."
archy and mehitabel
"the earth exists/
to grow toadstools for him/
to sit under
the sun to give him light/
by day and the moon/
and wheeling constellations
to make beautiful/
the night for the sake of/
warty bliggens"
"I am the most
important and probably
the only problem I have; the only one of all my
protagonists
to whom I attach real importance."
Idiots, Wind, and, yet again,
Anorexia and Wasted.
This will lead you back through previous issues of RALPH
(at least as far back as Winter, 1994 - 1995.)
Help perpetuate honest, noisy, pesky book reviews.
Subscribe, and get a print-out of some of our most pithy
along with a copy of one of the newest titles from
Mho & Mho Works.
Titles, authors, and publishers
of all books reviewed in RALPH ---
arranged chronologically.
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
San Diego CA 92176
PARADOX-OF-THE-MONTH