Vacant Lot by Oliver Rohe, translated by Laird Hunt. Counterpath Press, 2011. “Then I was king and now I’m no more than a ghost,” says the narrator in Oliver Rohe’s novel Vacant Lot. Now “I pass haggardly through trenches at the periphery of agitation … [Read more...]
Book Review: Henry Miller: Ahead of the Game by Kenton Crowther
Kenton Crowther's 3100-word essay, Henry Miller: Ahead of the Game has just become available in digital form. In it, Crowther shines a little light on Miller as a writer and as a man, exploring his life, sensibilities, and ongoing relevance. It's not … [Read more...]
“The Invention of the Past”: An essay on the novel Ancient Light by John Banville
When fifteen-year-old Alexander Cleave first catches sight of Mrs. Gray – the mother of his best friend – what he sees is a reflection of a reflection. As he waits in the hallway of her house, he sees her naked, “not nude”, in the full-length mirror fixed … [Read more...]
Paul Maher Jr. considers Kerouac’s Haunted Life
The Haunted Life and Other Writings / Da Capo Press / March 11, 2014 / 208 pp. Seventy years ago, in May 1944, Jack Kerouac toiled over a novella-length work set in Lowell, Massachusetts. It was written at the prompting of his two newest friends, the … [Read more...]
Book review – The Book of Duels by Michael Garriga
The Book of Duels by Michael Garriga / Milkweed / 2014 / ISBN: 9781571310934 Code Duello; or, How an Author Teaches You to Die, Rise, and be Born Again He greets you with a sly smile and a twinkle of the eyes that suggests mischief, leans into you … [Read more...]
Kerouac Before the Jazz: a review of “The Haunted Life”
There are some great lost manuscripts in American literature and some are truly lost. Ernest Hemingway famously lost the only draft of the first short stories he ever wrote on a French train. Most writers have "lost" manuscripts, conspicuously placed in … [Read more...]
The Novel as History: An essay on the book Homer and Langley by E.L. Doctorow
The novel Homer and Langley is part history and part fiction: a distinction without a difference within its pages. Doctorow has gained a reputation for taking considerable liberties with recorded history, for frequently transgressing the boundaries … [Read more...]
Liberty Ltd.: Trespassers Prosecuted – A Review of Liberty Limited by Károly Sándor Pallai
Liberty Limited is a collection of poems of great passion and compassion, of wonders and shame, of bodies and souls. It is a voice for and about the voiceless, for and about those who used to have some limited liberty, but who have lost it long ago: … [Read more...]
Book Review – IR 30: Indigenous Visions In Dub
I guess it's appropriate that blockades have gone up again on the Tyndengia Mohawk reservation in South Eastern Ontario Canada as I begin to write this review. Here in Canada the First Nations people are usually out of sight and out of mind unless they … [Read more...]
The Opening Line – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold." And so begins the first sentence to Hunter S. Thompson's seminal 1971 book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American … [Read more...]
beyond the ghosts: poems by t. kilgore splake
beyond the ghosts: poems by t. kilgore splake / Presa Press / PO Box 792, Rockford MI 49341 / 35 pages / $6.00 The author provided a copy to Empty Mirror, with no expectation of review. t. kilgore splake knows how to draw an evocative picture … [Read more...]
Book Review – Dreams before Extinction by Naeemeh Naeemaei
It's hard for us in the West not to have misconceptions of what life is like in countries where our perceptions are shaped entirely by what we read in the media. This is especially true of those countries which have attempted to isolate themselves and … [Read more...]
Book Review – The Silence Before the Whisper Comes by Bruce Kauffman
Why would anyone write poetry? It's not what you'd call glamourous. You're never going to make money at it. The best you can hope for is if you manage to publish a few books of poems you could possibly get picked up by some university to teach a creative … [Read more...]
Opacity: Liminal Landmine-Bodies – the foreword to Liberty Limited by Károly Sándor Pallai
Liberty Limited by Károly Sándor Pallai / Éditions Arthée / 2013 / ISBN: 9789993184638 One of my most despondent memories relates to my first encounter with “Mother Country” France, where it was distressingly tacit that I am “other” than French, … [Read more...]
Book Review — Grand Marais by t. kilgore splake
Grand Marais by t. kilgore splake / paperback, with DVD / 978-1-4675-8222-3 The author provided a copy to Empty Mirror, with no expectation of review. t. kilgore splake's latest volume is a poetic and photographic celebration of Grand Marais, … [Read more...]
Hammond Guthrie’s AsEverWas: Memoirs of a Beat Survivor
AsEverWas: Memoirs of a Beat Survivor by Hammond Guthrie / 2nd edition / Jorvik Press / 978-0988412231 / paperback, 296 pages The publisher provided Empty Mirror with a review copy. When the counterculture was busy being born in Los Angeles and San … [Read more...]
Book Review: Alice In tumblr-Land (And Other Fairy Tales For A New Generation)
Alice In tumblr-Land (And Other Fairy Tales For A New Generation) by Tim Manley / Penguin Books / 2013 / 978-0143124795 / 272 pages "Curiouser and curiouser" was Alice's commentary on the world she found down the rabbit hole in Lewis Carol's Alice In … [Read more...]
Book Review – T.C. Boyle Stories II
Stories II by T.C. Boyle / Viking / Penguin Group / 2013 / 978-0670026258 / 944 pages In some form or another the short story has probably been around as long as man has had the desire and the ability to communicate. Oral tales told around the fire at … [Read more...]
Review – Let’s Start a Pussy Riot
Let's Start a Pussy Riot, edited by Emely Neu and Jade French / Rough Trade / June 2013 / 978-0957626201 On February 21, 2012 members of the Russian feminist performance art group/collective Pussy Riot put on an agit-prop performance in a priests only … [Read more...]
Review – The Beats: A Very Short Introduction by David Sterritt
The Beats: A Very Short Introduction by David Sterritt / Oxford University Press / 978-0-19-979677-9 / 126 pages David Sterritt's work might be familiar to Beat or film aficionados through his previous books, which include Mad to be Saved: The Beats, … [Read more...]