Brownian Life by John Tischer / Bibliotheca Universalis / Bucharest, Romania / 2015 John Tischer was born in Chicago. He graduated from Carleton College in 1971 and was a student of Chögyam … [Read more...]
Book Review – Bad Baby by Abigail Welhouse
Bad Baby by Abigail Welhouse / Dancing Girl Press / $7 / 2015 This spiky-funny little book of poems is by a young Brooklyn-based poet named Abigail Welhouse, via a charming Chicago-based chapbook … [Read more...]
Book Review — Wait Til I’m Dead: Uncollected Poems by Allen Ginsberg
Wait Till I'm Dead: Uncollected Poems by Allen Ginsberg (Bill Morgan, ed.) / Grove Press / hardcover When I first heard about this book of uncollected poems by Allen Ginsberg, I imagined a slim … [Read more...]
Book Review – Joe Ridgwell’s novel, Burrito Deluxe
As a writer, I relish the occasional night of ritualistic storytelling. Nights where it becomes a sport, sat around bars, campfires, or kitchen tables; exchanging stories of where you've been and what … [Read more...]
Book Review – Stranger Days: A Novel by Rachel Kendall
Hemingway praised Paris as “a movable feast.” Henry James, in his preface to the 1903 edition of The Ambassadors, described a cliché that may or may not be true. He said “the moral scheme breaks down … [Read more...]
Erin Messer on Latif Harris’ Barter Within the Bark of Trees
In 1981, the poet Latif Harris was working at — and living above — Browser Books in its former location a block up from the current store on Fillmore Street. Harris was behind the front counter when, … [Read more...]
Book Review – Street Angel by Magie Dominic and Adult Onset by Ann-Marie MacDonald
With chapters named for the days of the week in Street Angel and with specific dates in a given week in Adult Onset, these two novels seem to make ideal reading companions. Ultimately, much of … [Read more...]
Yankees in Fairyland: A Review of Take Me Out, by Richard Greenberg
Richard Greenberg’s play Take Me Out is as much about the role of the athlete, particularly the baseball “star,” as it is about what makes a team function—and what threatens the unity of a team. The … [Read more...]
Stars, Salt & Sparrows: A Review of Ted Kooser’s “Splitting An Order”
Splitting An Order by Ted Kooser / Copper Canyon Press / 2014 / 84 pages / 978-1556594694 Overview The light of Ted Kooser is the everyday. To most of us these moments disappear, without … [Read more...]
Book Review – The Last First Day: A Novel
The Last First Day: A Novel by Carrie Brown / Pantheon / 304 pages / 978-0307908032 Carrie Brown’s prose sucks you into a kind of lull. Images of rooms without bodies, twilights in small … [Read more...]
The Curse of the Blinding Worm. A close look at ‘Observed While Falling: Bill Burroughs, Ah Pook and Me’, by Malcolm McNeill
Colin Wilson read this extraordinary book at a single sitting. He can’t have been an exception. Malcolm McNeill’s Observed While Falling: Bill Burroughs, Ah Pook and Me sweeps you up into a … [Read more...]
A Review of Joseph Ridgwell’s Cuba: In Search of Hemingway
Turning the first page on the handsewn binding of Joseph Ridgwell’s Cuba: In Search of Hemingway feels like something special. Like discovering the splintered edges of a treasure chest through sand. … [Read more...]
Book Review – Alex Preston’s In Love and War.
In Love and War is the third novel from Alex Preston, following 2010's This Bleeding City – which won The Edinburgh International Book Festival Readers’ First Book Award, and was chosen as one of … [Read more...]
Book Review – Vacant Lot by Oliver Rohe (trans. Laird Hunt)
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 … [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 … [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 … [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 … [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 … [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 … [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 … [Read more...]
