The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities Volume
XX, Number 3 Early Mid-Summer, 2000 |
NEW LISTINGS
The Last Days of World War II in Europe,
The Northwest Passage, and
When Mountains Walked
REVIEWS
Around Town:
'Tis: A Memoir
BRIEF REVIEWS
ARTICLES
Dave Eggers and McSweeney's
READINGS Matisse and the Hub of the Wheel
POETRY
LETTERS
THE OFFICIAL RALPH
RALPH'S TOP POP HITS
HELP
Squandering Aimlessly
My Adventures in the American Marketplace
"It's a kick in the face for a laid-off warehouseman in New York City,
a welfare mother in Detroit, an unemployed Mexican day laborer
in Brancaccio's home town of Los Angeles --- all of whose tax dollars
go to support this fluff."
The "New Yorker" and
the World it Made
"Hendrik Hertzberg once said,
Shawn was an absolute monarch, a dictator.
There were no office politics, except in the sense that
there were office politics in the Ottoman Empire."
"Some writers are masters of the page,
some of the chapter, and some --- like Faulkner and Joyce ---
of the single sentence. McCourt is the master of
the breathless paragraph."
The Swedish Associated Press Biblical School of Writing,
The Pakistani Dope School of Writing,
Droll English Wit, and
A Well-Known Catastrophe
Our Lady of Juquila
"One lusty, overeager couple, it is said, stopped by the roadside
to engage in some hanky-panky and presto, were changed to stone.
To this day, it is said, they are stuck there,
somewhere off in the mountains,
belly-to-belly."
"He has important things to say, as Shakespeare had important things to say.
And like Shakespeare, sometimes his words just sing off the page.
Sometimes, like Shakespeare, Eggers is so right
it takes one's breath away."
My Father's Castles
"He trespassed everywhere
(in Scotland there
is no law of trespass, he said,
and scaled a fence blaring with
prohibitions)
hunting the forgotten, the untraced,
the deserted brides
among houses."
"The odalisques he has studded with malachite and jasper,
their flesh veiled with a thousand eyes, perfumed eyes
dipped in the sperm of whales. Wherever a breeze stirs
there are breasts as cool as jelly, white pigeons come to flutter
and rut in the ice-blue veins of the Himalayas."
A Love Poem for Father's Day
"You stand at the blackboard, daddy,/
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot/
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who/Bit my pretty red heart in two."
Dr. Laura,
Great RALPH, and
Guru Yoga
Paradox-of-the-Month
In the five years of its existence, RALPH has published
hundreds of reviews and articles.
Some of these have gotten (and continue to get)
an inordinate number of hits.
We list herein those which ---
for no reason at all that we can fathom ---
appear again and again on our Daily Hit List.
Perpetuate honest, noisy, pesky book reviews.
Subscribe, and get a free copy of one of the newest titles from
Mho & Mho Works
along with a print-out of some of our most pithy reviews, in
The Folio
THE PREVIOUS ISSUE OF RALPH
TABLE OF CONTENTS
This will lead you back to the last RALPH, and,
if you persist, all the way back, through forty or so issues
to the very first one, conceived in
the dark and wet Winter of
1994 - 1995.
Titles, authors, and publishers
of all books reviewed in RALPH ---
arranged chronologically.
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
Lolita Lark, Editor-In-Chief
Post
Office Box 16719
San Diego CA 92176
poo@cts.com