The Review of Contemporary Fiction articles from September 2002

The Review of Contemporary Fiction archives from September 2002

Louis Zukofsky.
September 22, 2002... The small and quirky group of writings that comprises Louis Zukofsky's fiction is undoubtedly destined to be read as an appendage to the main corpus of a major twentieth-century American poet. Zukofsky always saw himself as a poet first,...

Nicholas Mosley.
September 22, 2002... In many ways, it is easier to describe Nicholas Mosley's place in contemporary literature in terms of how he does not fit in and what he does not do. As a white, male, British, moneyed author, son of an aristocratic and infamous father, he is...

The way of seeing the story: an interview with Nicholas Mosley.(Interview)
September 22, 2002... The interview took place on a Wednesday afternoon, 30 May 2001, in Mr. Mosley's basement study in London. Roy Flannagan: You wrote in Experience and Religion, "There is an enormous amount of joy, energy, order, significance in the world...

Coleman Dowell.
September 22, 2002... The two gelatin silver portraits of Coleman Dowell in the Carl Van Vechten collection at the Library of Congress communicate the striking contrasts that defined Dowell's life and art. The first photograph shows Dowell in profile, draped in the...

Rick Moody. The Black Veil.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Little, Brown, 2002. 323 pp. $24.95. In this new book, not quite a memoir, not really a novel, Rick Moody uses the coincidence of a possible ancestor having been the model for the face-concealing Mr. Hooper in Hawthorne's "The Minister's...

Ann Beattie. The Doctor's House.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Scribner, 2002. 252 pp. $24.00. Over the course of her long career, Ann Beattie has proven herself to be an artist firmly committed to the expansion and development of her craft. Read chronologically, her novels reveal an uncompromising and...

Bradford Morrow. Ariel's Crossing.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Viking, 2002. 390 pp. $25.95. If Don DeLillo's Underworld anatomized the end of the Cold War's fraught dialectic, then a number of recent novels have traced the imaginative fall-out of the nuclear age beyond those limits. Carter Scholz's...

Arnost Lustig. Lovely Green Eyes.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Trans. Ewald Osers. Arcade, 2002. 248 pp. $24.95. Lovely Green Eyes is absolutely incendiary reading, frightening and compelling in its authority. Into the Nazi inferno we accompany Hanka Kaudersova, "Skinny," during her "free" time between...

Janice Galloway. Where You Find It.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Simon & Schuster, 2002. 235 pp. $24.00. Where You Find It (published in 1996 in Britain to wide acclaim), like Mary Gaitskill's Bad Behavior, attenuates the perversity of the domestic condition, particularly relationships. The first story,...

Victor Pelevin. Homo Zapiens.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Trans. Andrew Bromfield. Viking, 2002. 256 pp. $24.95. Life is a television program, commercials the key to meaning and worth, yet as you watch with eager excitement your character is overwritten by their message. Pelevin's ambitious...

Kenzaburo Oe. Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age!(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Trans. John Nathan. Grove, 2002. 259 pp. $24.00. Fans of Oe's work will recognize the author's alter ego K and his disabled son Eeyore in this latest novel by the Nobel Prize winner. The chronicling of the father-son relationship continues,...

Arno Schmidt. The School for Atheists: a Novella = Comedy in 6 Acts.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Trans. and intro. John E. Woods. Green Integer, 2001. 301 pp. Paper: $16.95. Arno Schmidt, the great novelist, not the widely published Waldorf Astoria chef, has been called the German James Joyce and the clown prince of European fiction....

Italo Svevo. As a Man Grows Older.(Book Review)
September 22, 2002... Italo Svevo. As a Man Grows Older. Trans. Beryl de Zoete. Intro. James Lasdun. New York Review Books, 2001. 235 pp. Paper: $12.95; Livia Veneziani Svevo. Memoir of Italo Svevo. Trans. Isabel Quigley. Preface P. N. Furbank. Northwestern Univ....

James McCourt. Wayfaring at Waverly in Silver Lake.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Knopf, 2002. 322 pp. $25.00. James McCourt is one of our most gifted, thrilling writers. His style is so distinctive that I can open his new collection of stories at any page and recognize his juxtaposition of "high" and "low" notes, his...

Jeff VanderMeer. City of Saints & Madmen.(Book Review)
September 22, 2002... Intro. Michael Moorcock. Prime, 2002. 460 pp. $40.00. Though City of Saints & Madmen was originally published in paperback in 2001, the fact that this hardback reissue is twice as long, containing more than 50,000 words of new material,...

Christian Bok. Eunoia.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Coach House, 2001. 105 pp. Paper: $16.95. The obvious temptation in reviewing Eunoia is to compose some cute sentences that mimic its style (not to worry, Christian Bok won't be suffering that indignity here). This, of course, is because...

Tarjei Vesaas. The Ice Palace.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Trans. Elizabeth Rokkan. Peter Owen/Dufour Editions, 2002. 176 pp. Paper: $19.95. When one thinks of Scandinavian literature, several names immediately come to mind: Ibsen, Strindberg, Hamsun. But for those who know what brilliant gems can...

Noam Mor. Arc: Cleavage of Ghosts.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Spuyten Duyvil, 2002. 267 pp. Paper: $14.95. Noam Mor's debut novel follows primordial, modern-day Adam in his quest to find the reason for his existence after losing his lover, Phoenix. After encountering Kadman, his philosophical,...

Kate Braverman. The Incantation of Frida K.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Seven Stories, 2002. 235 pp. $23.95. Kate Braverman's new novel presents a first-person testimony of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. As the artist lies on her deathbed at age forty-six, she recalls her tortured, unrepentant life of...

Paul Bowles. The Stories of Paul Bowles.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Intro. Robert Stone. Ecco, 2001. 657 pp. $39.95. This new collection looks impressive right from the first glance at the cover--a photograph of Bowles seated in front of an enormous pile of luggage, meticulously dressed, with his trademark...

Peter Cameron. The City of Your Final Destination.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002. 312 pp. $24.00. Peter Cameron's The City of Your Final Destination is a novel about characters whose ideas and impulses are presented so directly they seem to embody forces of nature. Omar, an Iranian graduate...

Claude Simon. The Trolley.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Trans. Richard Howard. New Press, 2002. 109 pp. $22.95. The epistemological and ontological rubric established by two epigraphs provides the formal foundation for The Trolley, a wonderful novel that is a splendid addition to Claude Simon's...

Ciaran Carson. Shamrock Tea.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Granta, 2002. 308 pp. Paper: $12.95. Smoke it or drink it; the effects are the same. Shamrock tea induces magical flights of fancy and the ability to see colors, transcend time, consort with saints, and imagine worlds beyond reality....

Brock Clarke. What We Won't Do.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Selected by Mark Richard. Sarabande, 2002. 165 pp. Paper: $13.95. The immediate and oft-repeated reaction to the notion that good fiction makes the familiar strange is to point out that the familiar is already pretty strange to begin with....

Carl Tighe. Burning Worm.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... IMPress, 2001.228 pp. Paper: 8.00 [pounds sterling]. Burning Worm chronicles the near past (the Solidarity years in early 1980s Poland) with wise playfulness. Tighe taught in Poland during this era and is a prominent scholar of Polish...

Willem Elsschot. Cheese.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Trans. and preface Paul Vincent. Granta, 2002. 134 pp. $14.95. Willem Elsschot wrote and published Cheese in 1933. An immediate success in Dutch-speaking countries, Cheese is a novella that satirizes the world of business while skewering...

Rosalind Belben. Hound Music.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Chatto & Windus, 2001. 306 pp. $27.50. Set on an English country estate at the turn of the twentieth century, Hound Music centers on the Lupus family and the passion of its members (with the notable exception of Dorothy, mother of the Lupus...

Felisberto Hernandez. Lands of Memory.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Trans. Esther Allen. New Directions, 2002. 190 pp. $24.95. Lauded as a founding father of magical realism by its favorite sons--Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Italo Calvino, and others--the eccentric Felisberto Hernandez has received little...

Haruki Murakami. After the Quake.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Trans. Jay Rubin. Knopf, 2002. 192 pp. $21.00. For a book ostensibly concerned with the January 1995 earthquake in Kobe, the stories in After the Quake are strikingly subtle. Instead of exploring the torn earth at the quake's epicenter,...

Arthur Schnitzler. Night Games and Other Stories and Novellas.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Trans. Margret Schaefer. Foreword John Simon. Ivan R. Dee, 2002. 272 pp. $28.50. This collection of nine stories and novellas by Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931) provides an excellent introduction to an underappreciated writer of penetrating...

Jerzy Pilch. His Current Woman.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Trans. Bill Johnston. Northwestern Univ. Press, 2002. 131 pp. Paper: $15.95. His Current Woman is comic, and yes, farce does ensue. But what constitutes plot--a Polish veterinarian hiding his latest tryst, along with everything she owns,...

Luis Fernando Verissimo. The Club of Angels.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Trans. Margaret Jull Costa. New Directions, 2002. 135 pp. $21.95. Luis Fernando Verissimo's first novel to be translated into English centers on the Beef Stew Club, a group of ten well-off Brazilian gastronomes who meet once a month for a...

Leon Forrest. Meteor in the Madhouse.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Ed. and intro. John G. Cawelti and Merle Drown. Foreword Marianne Forrest. Triquarterly Books, 2001. 273 pp. $26.95. The late Leon Forrest created this jazzy blues collection that focuses once more on the surrounding life of Joubert Antoine...

Alessandro Boffa. You're an Animal, Viskovitz!(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Trans. John Casey with Maria Sanminiatelli. Knopf, 2002. 176 pp. $18.00. Although I read Ovid's Metamorphoses many years ago, I still think that it is one of the texts shadowing modern literature. Ovid's interest in the changes of mortals...

Carter Scholz. Radiance.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Picador USA, 2002. 388 pp. $24.00. America's newfound interest in homeland security has led to a resurgent focus on missile defense; one hopeful by-product of the tense current context is enhanced commercial relevance for Radiance, Carter...

Mo Yan. Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Trans. Howard Goldblatt. Arcade, 2001. 189 pp. $23.95. In the preface to this selection of stories, Mo Yan, one of China's most remarkable contemporary writers, traces his drive to write to childhood experiences of starvation during the...

Christian Gailly. The Passion of Martin Fissel-Brandt.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Trans. Melanie Kemp. Intro. Brian Evenson. Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2002. 128 pp. Paper: $14.95. A deep anxiety hangs about the shattered narrative line of French minimaliste Christian Gailly's slender new offering, an uneasiness as...

John McGahern. By the Lake.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Knopf, 2002. 336 pp. $24.00. By the Lake, John McGahern's sixth novel and his first in twelve years, marks a significant departure in his career. His early novels--The Dark and The Barracks--are brooding, violent books that emphasize the...

Nina Berberova. Billancourt Tales.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Trans. and intro. Marian Schwartz. New Directions, 2001. 175 pp. $24.95. Nina Berberova's Billancourt Tales comprises thirteen slender, artful stories of emigre life as played out in Billancourt, a Russian suburb of Paris, during the 1920s...

Alessandro Baricco. City.(Book Review)
September 22, 2002... Trans. Ann Goldstein. Knopf, 2002. 326 pp. $25.00. City is set in America, but it isn't really about the city and its characters only sort of resemble Americans. Instead, it imitates the form of the modern metropolis, with stories that feel...

Carlos Fuentes. Inez.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Trans. Margaret Sayer Peden. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002. 150 pp. $18.00. Inez is a puzzling little book, even for Carlos Fuentes, writer of such ambitious and complex novels as The Death of Artemio Cruz and Terra Nostra. Besides the...

Jamie O'Neill. At Swim, Two Boys.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Scribner, 2002. 572 pp. $28.00. At the heart of this sprawling and ambitious novel is the literal and metaphorical action of swimming, both in Dublin Bay and Ireland in the early part of the last century. Set in Glasthule in south County...

Michele Spina. Sleep: a Utopian Bestiary.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Trans. Ann Colcord with Hugh Shankland. Colin Smythe/Dufour Editions, 2002. 127 pp. Paper: $19.95. Insomnia is elevated to high art in Sleep: A Utopian Bestiary, Michele Spina's meditation on life, death, dreams, memory, and the tenuous...

Paul Ruffin. Islands, Women, and God.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Browder Springs, 2001. 237 pp. $24.95. The title of Ruffin's collection comes from the last story, a tale about a man who forsakes civilized life to inhabit islands near the Pascagoula River. Such a story fronts the collection's unifying...

Luis Alberto Urrea. Six Kinds of Sky.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Cinco Puntos, 2002. 146 pp. Paper: $12.95. In "Amazing Grace: Story and Writer," which follows the six stories in this collection, Urrea gives a good summary of its development: "The book is some kind of downward spiral. It starts out all...

Harold Jaffe. False Positive.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... FC2, 2002. 140 pp. Paper: $12.95. Jaffe delivers up another slim volume of the lean and mean fiction that's become his trademark; here he offers up a tapestry of recent headline events, like CNN on acid. Each of the fifteen "fictions" in...

Paul Goodman. The Empire City.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Preface Taylor Stoehr. Black Sparrow, 2002. 598 pp. Paper: $17.50. This unconventional, forgotten masterpiece deserves recognition as one of the most interesting fictional works of the American 1940s and fifties. A true renaissance man,...

Jeffery Renard Allen. Rails under My Back.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Harcourt, 2000. 563 pp. Paper: $14.00. Poet and short-story writer Jeffery Renard Allen's first novel stitches together the complex stories and genealogies of two African American families from the South and the residual effects of...

Aldous Huxley. Collected Essays, Volume III: 1930-1935.(Book Review)
September 22, 2002... Ed. Robert S. Baker and James Sexton. Ivan R. Dee, 2001. 632 pp. $35.00; Volume IV: 1936-1938. Ed. Robert S. Baker and James Sexton. Ivan R. Dee, 2001. 445 pp. $35.00. These volumes, under the editorship of Robert S. Baker (author of an...

Josef Skvorecky. When Eve Was Naked: Stories of a Life's Journey.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002. 352 pp. $25.00. This collection includes twenty-four stories drawn from the years 1948 to 1996, gathered in six sections, for example, "Introduction to Life," "The Evil Empire," and "All's Well That Ends...

David Antin and Charles Bernstein. A Conversation with David Antin.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Granary, 2002. 123 pp. Paper: $12.95. An e-mail interview that outgrew its original forum (i.e., the Review of Contemporary Fiction), A Conversation with David Antin is an illuminating exploration of the aesthetic philosophy behind David...

Elizabeth Young. Pandora's Handbag: Adventures in the Book World.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Intro. Will Self. Serpent's Tail, 2001. 366 pp. Paper: $18.00. Until her untimely death from hepatitis C in early 2001, Elizabeth Young was a prominent British arts-writer, impressively well read and articulate. Pandora's Handbag reprints...

Becky Bradway. Pink Houses and Family Taverns.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Foreword Michael Martone. Indiana Univ. Press, 2002. 233 pp. Paper: $17.95. In Becky Bradway's personal-essay pastiche, the author proves that you can go home again. "I tried to leave my family behind, like closing a book after creasing...

David Cowart. Don DeLillo: the Physics of Language.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2002... Univ. of Georgia Press, 2002. 257 pp. $45.00. David Cowart has made a career of offering incisive, elegant, and revelatory interpretations of contemporary literature. His newest book covers the career of Don DeLillo from Americana to The...

Books received.(Bibliography)
September 22, 2002... Adams, Alice. The Stories of Alice Adams. Knopf, 2002. $30.00. (F) Arroyo, Rane. Home Movies of Narcissus, Univ. of Arizona Press, 2002. Paper: $14.95. (P) Auchincloss, Louis. Her Infinite Variety. Mariner, 2002. Paper: $13.00. (F) ...