The Review of Contemporary Fiction articles from September 1996

The Review of Contemporary Fiction archives from September 1996

Introduction: native innocence, alien knowledge. (essays about Edmund White and his writing)
September 22, 1996... The essays gathered here discuss Edmund White's fiction (his novels and short stories) and one work of nonfiction, the travel book States of Desire: Travels in Gay America. They omit any discussion of his plays--an early and continuing source of...

Edmund White speaks with Edmund White. (interview)(Interview)
September 22, 1996... In 1994, when Edmund White was asked to do an interview for this issue, he decided instead to interview himself. Q: Could you describe your early unpublished novels? A: But there are so many of them! When I was fifteen I wrote my first...

Knut Hamsun. (Norwegian writer)
September 22, 1996... Knut Hamsun is one of my favorite novelists although my affection for him troubles me. Politically he was deplorable and as a sensibility he can be maddening, more a difficult adolescent than a satisfying mature mind. And yet he remains for me a...

The hermaphrodite. (short story)
September 22, 1996... This story I wrote while I was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, probably in 1960, although I liked it enough to submit it (unsuccessfully) after I moved to New York in 1962. The twenty-year-old writer was already seeking to find a...

A valentine for Elena. (Edmund White's novel, 'Forgetting Elena.')
September 22, 1996... I began by drawing conclusions: Elena embodied the incestuous family attachment that blocks individual growth; the weird ways of island society replicated the scary world a child finds outside his home. I soon came to mistrust such insights....

Years later, by the pool: looking back at Edmund White's 'Nocturnes for the King of Naples.'
September 22, 1996... In those days I was not yet the ghost I've become. --Edmund White, Nocturnes for the King of Naples For a long time, I wanted to have written Edmund White's Nocturnes for the King of Naples. Perhaps, like many gay men who began publishing...

'States of Desire,' or the sissy's revenge. (non-fiction by Edmund White)
September 22, 1996... This Book--the 1991 Plume paperback, at least--now comes with three commentaries by the author himself: an introduction and "Epilogue: Self-Criticism," written when the travelogue first came out in 1980, and an afterword for this latest edition....

'A Boy's Own Story.' (novel by Edmund White)
September 22, 1996... When I Retrieved my copy of A Boy's Own Story for this essay, I was surprised by how short the book is--a little over 200 pages. By the time I finished it, I had come to think of it again as a big novel. Why is that? The story is not grand; its...

'Caracole.' (novel by Edmund White)
September 22, 1996... "MESSY LIVES, that's the name of the book I'm going to write." Thus says one of the characters (as stylish as ever, but almost hysterical with boredom) in Caracole. The projected title might well have served for the novel itself. It might equally...

The Midwesterner as artist. (Edmund White's 'The Beautiful Room Is Empty')
September 22, 1996... It has rarely been an advantage for an artist to be born into political times he could not ignore, and it is a paradox of the artist's life that he is often less able than others to ignore events around him, more apt to join causes he sees as his...

"A more angular and less predictable way": epiphanies in Edmund White's 'The Darker Proof.'
September 22, 1996... In his interview with Kay Bonetti in the Missouri Review Edmund White offers words that might serve as an introduction to The Darker Proof: Stories from a Crisis (1988), a volume of AIDS-related stories to which Adam Mars-Jones also contributed:...

Edmund White and the Violet Quill Club.
September 22, 1996... In early March 1980 New York City's in newspaper, the Soho News, published an article by Australian scholar Dennis Altman entitled "A Moveable Brunch: The Fag-Lit Mafia." Altman had been observing and critiquing the American gay scene. and he...

An Edmund White checklist.(Bibliography)
September 22, 1996... Fiction Forgetting Elena. New York: Random House, 1973. Nocturnes for the King of Naples. New York: St. Martin's, 1978. A Boy's Own Story. New York: Dutton, 1982. Caracole. New York: Dutton, 1985. The Beautiful Room Is Empty. New York:...

Samuel R. Delany: an introduction.
September 22, 1996... Following seven years as a professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts, during which time teaching and academic affairs claimed all his attention, Samuel R. Delany has recently rededicated himself to writing and...

An interview with Samuel R. Delany. (Interview)
September 22, 1996... K. LESLIE STEINER: Recently you've discouraged personal interviews, urging those who would interview you to write out their questions; and you respond in writing. Your recent book, Silent Interviews, is restricted to such written interviews. Ours...

From 'The splendor and misery of bodies, of cities.' (fiction)(excerpt)
September 22, 1996... There are on Inring (so GI told me) a few small areas that have been built up. My destination point was not, however, one. We spent the morning setting up the imported artwork (2417-Y) in the vaurine library at the far end of the station...

Black man/gay man/writer ... prodigy: the quest for identity in Delany's early work. (Samuel R. Delany)
September 22, 1996... Reading Samuel R. Delany's autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water, brings home with full force the degree of interconnection between life and fiction in his work. In June 1961, after making love with future wife Marilyn Hacker, Delany sits...

In the scorpion garden: 'Hogg.'
September 22, 1996... The secret is never the repressed . . . it is that which no longer pertains to the order of truth. That which, saturated with itself, withdraws from itself, plunging into the secret and absorbing everything surrounding it. ...

"This you-shaped hole of insight and fire": meditations on 'Dhalgren.'
September 22, 1996... Dhalgren can best be characterized by the words that Kid, the novel s protagonist, uses to characterize his own book of poems: "a complicitous illusion in lingual catalysis, a crystalline and conscientious alkahest."(1) This is the sort of...

'Dhalgren:' the city not yet fallen, the novel still unread. (science fiction by Samuel R. Delany)
September 22, 1996... There is a quotation from an interview with Samuel Delany in Science Fiction Eye, which I am probably misremembering (an act less pure than that of not having read the interview at all), to the effect that certain books (particularly the "Great...

Jewels in Junk City: to read 'Triton.'
September 22, 1996... Samuel R. Delany's Triton is an experiment in radical utopian narrative. It depicts a miraculously hi-tech society, in this case set on the Neptunian moon Triton over a century hence. On Triton there are few conventional or physical restraints on...

Delany's tales. (Samuel R. Delany's sword and sorcery fiction)
September 22, 1996... About five years ago, after I had read and thoroughly enjoyed a couple of books by Samuel Delany--Triton and Babel-17--a friend suggested I read Tales of Neveryon. Without that recommendation and without the other Delany novels under my reading...

To see what condition our condition is in: trial by language in 'Stars in my pocket like grains of sand.'
September 22, 1996... One of the Definitive characteristics of Samuel R. Delany's fiction is its "consciousness-raising" function. The number of characters in his works who are marginal to their social contexts or outsiders to those contexts altogether calls attention...

On 'Wagner/Artaud.'
September 22, 1996... When in this essay I make war on Wagner..., the last thing I want to do is to start a celebration for any other musicians. Other musicians don't count compared to Wagner. --Nietzsche, Der Fall Wagner (1888) Samuel Delaney's...

Necessary constraints: Samuel R. Delany on science fiction.
September 22, 1996... Important not only as a science fiction writer, Samuel R. Delany is also a major critic and theorist of the genre. Beyond what is embedded in his fiction, he has published five volumes specifically devoted to SF criticism and theory. The core...

A Samuel R. Delany checklist.(Bibliography)
September 22, 1996... Fiction The Jewels of Aptor. New York: Ace Books, 1962. The Ballad of Beta-2. New York: Ace Books, 1965. Empire Star. New York: Ace Books, 1966. Babel-17. New York: Ace Books, 1966. The Einstein Intersection. New York: Ace Books, 1967....

French translations and American publishing: a roundtable.
September 22, 1996... Jacqueline Pavero, Foreign Rights Director of Albin Michel, Anne-Solange Nobie, Foreign Rights Director of Gallimard, and John O'Brien, Dalkey Archive Press publisher and RCF editor, exchange views on the problem of why more French literature is...

Slowness.
September 22, 1996... Book Reviews Milan Kundera. Trans. Linda Asher. HarperCollins, 1996. 156 pp. $21.00. Fans of Milan Kundera can be divided crudely into two camps: the Laughers and the Immortals. Laughers favor the sprightly, Scheherazade humor of...

John's Wife.
September 22, 1996... Robert Coover. Simon & Schuster, 1996. 428 pp. $24.00. Over a thirty-year career, Robert Coover has given us ground-breaking fiction that, while making us laugh, cuts to the heart of the stories that define our world and to the terrible truths...

The Most High.(Brief Article)
September 22, 1996... Maurice Blanchot. Trans. Allan Stoekl. Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1996. 254 pp. $35.00. Despite the wealth of translation of Maurice Blanchot's work available, the arrival of one of his novels in English tends to be not only welcome but...

Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer.
September 22, 1996... Steven Millhauser. Crown, 1996. 294 pp. $24.00. Considering the modernization of a venerable hotel, the eponymous hero of Steven Millhauser's novel Martin Dressler argues, "people liked telephones and the new electric elevators and private...

The Stupefaction: Stories and a Novella.(Brief Article)
September 22, 1996... Diane Williams. Knopf, 1996. 176 pp. $21.00. This third book of fiction by Diane Williams is an important addition to her already compelling literary career. Her first longer work, the title novella, is collected here with forty-nine of her...

Pereira Declares.(Brief Article)
September 22, 1996... Antonio Tabucchi. Trans. Patrick Creagh. New Directions, 1996. 144 pp. $19.95. Tabucchi's latest novel begins with a characteristic paragraph. Pereira, the fat old columnist of a periodical called the Lisbon, is a puzzled critic. He loves...

The Civilized Tribes.(Brief Article)
September 22, 1996... Jerry Bumpus. Univ. of Akron Press, 1995. 278 pp. $24.95; paper: $14.9 The Civilized Tribes gathers new and previously collected stories by Jerry Bumpus, who in the sixties was called "the king of underground writers" but somehow managed to...

Kink.(Brief Article)
September 22, 1996... Kathe Koja. Holt, 1996. 278 pp. $23.00. The cover of this haunting novel is a photograph of a partly nude woman--we see her breasts, but not the lower part of her body--but she does not arouse us; she seems to be distracted, lost in thought....

Unreal City.
September 22, 1996... Thomas E. Kennedy. Wordcraft of Oregon (P.O. Box 3235, La Grande, OR 97850), 1996. 192 pp. Paper: $11.95. Those who have had the good fortune and literary savvy to tune in early to Thomas E. Kennedy's extraordinary channel, broadcasting now...

The Returns.(Brief Article)
September 22, 1996... Dennis Barone. Sun & Moon, 1996. 89 pp. Paper: $10.95. The latest installment in Sun & Moon's New American Fiction Series, Dennis Barone's The Returns continues in the vein of the linguistic manipulations of his Abusing the Telephone. The...

Bird-Self Accumulated.(Brief Article)
September 22, 1996... Don Judson. New York Univ. Press, 1996. 179 pp. $16.95 This first novel by Don Judson, the winner of the Mamdouha S. Bobst Literary Award, deals with a disaffected, drug-using character named Holgate who wanders in and out of burglaries,...

Dradin, In Love: A Tale of Elsewhen and Otherwhere.(Brief Article)
September 22, 1996... Jeff VanderMeer. Buzzcity Press (P.O. Box 38190, Tallahassee, FL 32315), 1996.98 pp. Paper: $9.95. There I was feeling despondent, in a socioliterary sort of way, having just read this really macabre piece in Newsweek (3 June 1996) about how...

Billy Sunday.(Brief Article)
September 22, 1996... Rod Jones. Holt, 1996 255 pp. $23.00. This novel--almost a prose poem--succeeds in capturing our yearning for transcendence (exemplified by the historian Frederick Jackson Turner and the revivalist Billy Sunday). It is a meditation on the...

Grey Area.
September 22, 1996... Will Self. Atlantic Monthly press, 1996. 287 pp. $21.00 It's difficult to hear about Will Self, the author of The Quantity Theory of Insanity, and not hear the word satire. His publisher and agent, his people, have decided that it's by his...

Acid.(Brief Article)
September 22, 1996... Edward Falco. Univ. of Notre Dame PRess, 1995. 193 pp. $25.00; paper: $14.95 Winner of the Richard Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction, Acid collects a number of straightforward, sometimes gritty, realist stories. The stories are generally spare...

Her Wild American Self.(Brief Article)
September 22, 1996... M. Evelina Galang. Coffee House Press, 1996. 180 pp. Paper: $112.95 In the afterword to this absorbing first collection of short stories, Galang writes that all of her women characters are, "working to figure out who to be and how to do it."...

Kora and Ka.
September 22, 1996... One of the intriguing questions raised by The Poet's Story (edited by Howard Moss), Three Poems by John Ashbery, and The Doctor Stories by William Carlos Williams has never been answered. The question is raised again by these two texts. Why do...

Monolith.(Brief Article)
September 22, 1996... Matt Corry. Xurban Press (Small Press Distribution), 1996. 96 pp. Paper: $7.00. Monolith collects thirty-one stories in 96 pages, the longest being about seven pages, the shortest twelve sentences long. The stories are nicely pared, operating...

Proper Name.
September 22, 1996... Bernadette Mayer. New Directions, 1996. 144 pp. Paper: $13.95. Bernadette Mayer is one of the truly unabashed individually voiced bards of our time. This culmination of Mayer's particular flow of language, initiated in her early work decades...

Free Rein.(Brief Article)
September 22, 1996... Andre Breton. Trans. Michel Parmentier and Jacqueline d'Amboise. Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1996.291 pp. $35.00. This collection of prefaces, manifestos, and meditations written by Breton in the years 1936-1952 is required reading for an...

Channel-Surfing the Apocalypse.
September 22, 1996... Susan Smith Nash. Avec Books, 1996. 189 pp. Paper: $11.95 Susan Smith Nash is awaiting the apocalypse, but not in its usual form. In Channel-Surfing the Apocalypse Nash explores the possibilities of annihilation by disease, radiation fallout,...

The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber.(Brief Article)
September 22, 1996... Nicholson Baker. Random, 1996. 353 pp. $25.00. I remember my first reading of The Mezzanine. I was puzzled by the obsessive attention to detail (especially in the footnotes). Baker used much space for references to Marcus Aurelius and mall...

French Erotic Fiction: Women's Desiring Writing, 1880-1990.(Brief Article)
September 22, 1996... Alex Hughes and Kate Ince, eds. 1880-1990. Berg, 1996. 191 pp. Paper $16.95. This volume groups together six analytical essays on six French writers. The period of time covered is rather broad, stretching from the decadence of Rachilde's...

Why I have Not Written Any of My Books.(Brief Article)
September 22, 1996... Marcel Benabou. Trans. David Kornacker. Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1996. 111 pp. $25.00. Benabou, a member of the Oulipo group, offers a thrilling, witty, and often somber text. Although it reminds me somewhat of 20 Lines a Day, it is perhaps...

How to Write.(Brief Article)
September 22, 1996... Gertrude Stein. 1995.428 pp. Paper: $12.95 This book is part of one of the more important projects of our day: the getting into print (again) of Gertrude Stein. How to Write (first published in 1931) is composed in eight sections, the sections...

Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community.(Brief Article)
September 22, 1996... Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris, eds. Duke Univ. Press, 1995. 580 pp. Paper: $23.00. This collection of new and old essays is a necessary, valuable text. It refuses to allow the term magical realism to be a cliche for South American...

Consolation at Ground Zero.(Brief Article)
September 22, 1996... Brooke Horvath. Eastern Washington Univ. Press, 1995. 97 pp. $24.00; paper: $14.00. Replete with lustrous narratives, Consolation at Ground Zero eschews theorizing, choosing instead the directness and detail of all good storytelling. The...

Same Blue Chevy.(Brief Article)
September 22, 1996... Gale Renee Walden. Tia Chucha Press, 1996. 72 pp. Paper: $10.95. In her first book of poetry Gale Walden takes us on a journey to a place where God assumes many forms: he is a camera man, he plays double-clutch jump rope with little girls, he...

The Letters of Wanda Tinasky.
September 22, 1996... TR Factor, ed. Introduction by Bruce Anderson. Foreword by Steven Moore. Vers Libre Press (P.O. Box 2911, Portland, OR 97208-2911), 1996. xviii + 224 pp. Paper: $25.00. By now you've heard the story. A small weekly paper, the Anderson Valley...