A Graphic Novel by Blutch, reviewed by Gabriel Chazan SO LONG, SILVER SCREEN (Picturebox) Every film is a ghost story. When we go to the theater, we see flickering images of things in the eternal past yet present which persistently…
Poetry by Charles Bernstein, reviewed by Mary Weston RECALCULATING (University of Chicago Press) Bringing to mind the now all-too familiar GPS phrase, Charles Bernstein’s latest collection of poetry, Recalculating, depicts a poet pulled in a number of different directions and…
A Novel by Rabee Jaber, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, reviewed by Nathaniel Popkin THE MEHLIS REPORT (New Directions Paperbacks) At night, I dream the city; I dream Baldwin’s—and Capote’s—alluring New York at mid-century; I dream Pamuk’s melancholic Istanbul of…
Nonfiction by Martha P. Nochimson, reviewed by Chris Ludovici DAVID LYNCH SWERVES: UNCERTAINTY THROUGH LOST HIGHWAY TO INLAND EMPIRE (University of Texas Press) In David Lynch Swerves: Uncertainty Through Lost Highway to Inland Empire, Martha P. Nochimson presents a radical…
A Novel by César Aira, reviewed by Nathaniel Popkin THE HARE (New Directions Paperbacks) The writer César Aira has a charming trait (at least in the English language translations of his books published by New Directions): at the end of…
A Collection by Various Authors, reviewed by Ariel Diliberto RUST BELT RISING ALMANAC, Vol. 1 (The Head & The Hand Press) Rust Belt Rising Almanac presents a pastiche of short stories, poems, photographs and artwork. Collectively they form a fairly complete…
BARNABY VOL. 1
by Crockett Johnson
introduction by Chris Ware; Art direction by Daniel Clowes
Fantagraphics, 336 pages
reviewed by Travis DuBose
In his foreword to its first collected volume, Chris Ware compares Barnaby, Crockett Johnson's 1940s newspaper strip, to other early influential comics like Little Nemo, Krazy Kat and Peanuts. He goes on to say that Barnaby is “the last great comic strip,” a description that ends up being a little unfair to any first time readers of Barnaby: though there are moments of greatness in it, Volume One mostly points forward to the strip's potential, rather than showcasing Johnson's brilliance firsthand. This difficult start is consistent with the beginnings of other strips, even great ones: the ability to deliver a solid joke, every day, in three or four panels is mastered by very few and even fewer, if any, can do it consistently from the first strip. Barnaby, however, has one of the best rocky starts I've encountered in the medium, and its later greatness is well worth its early fumbles.
Crockett Johnson may not have the immediate name recognition of Charles Schulz or Bill Watterson, but his work is a mainstay of American childhoods: he authored Harold and the Purple Crayon and its sequels, and readers of the Harold books will recognize in Barnaby's protagonist, five year old Barnaby Baxter, the prototype of Harold. Additionally, there are several Barnaby strips featuring a half moon seen out the window over Barnaby's bed, the final, iconic image of the first Harold book. Harold readers will also recognize the art style: stark, bold lines over simple backgrounds that nonetheless show an impressive command of perspective and space.
Poetry by Monica Wendel, reviewed by Kenna O’Rourke NO APOCALYPSE (Georgetown Review Press) Monica Wendel makes every pretense of proving the veracity of her title, No Apocalypse, in her debut collection: as if responding to the question “What are some…
A Novella by Daniel Torday, reviewed by Michelle FostTHE SENSUALIST (Nouvella Books) I’ve been thinking a lot about how I am at once very connected to and disconnected from Germany, and I’ve been exploring this feeling in a novel I’m…
A Novel by Ariel Djanikian, reviewed by John Carroll THE OFFICE OF MERCY (Viking) I had the good fortune of reading Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood,and the Prison of Belief immediately before picking up Ariel Djanikian’s debut novel, The…
Poetry by Daisy Fried, reviewed by Shinelle L. Espaillat WOMEN’S POETRY: POEMS AND ADVICE (University of Pittsburgh Press) Daisy Fried’s new collection, Women’s Poetry: Poems and Advice, illuminates issues that are both specifically feminine (i.e. mother-daughter paradigms) and gender neutral…
A Graphic Narrative by Anders Nilsen, reviewed by Henry Steinberg THE END (Fantagraphics Books) The Humming Bird. The Condor. The Giant. The Hands. I hold your head in my hands and your heart in my heart and I look at…
A Novel by Filip Noterdaeme, reviewed by Michelle Fost THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF DANIEL J. ISENGART (Outpost19) Because Gertrude Stein wished readers would pay more attention to the ambitious but largely unread work she considered her masterpiece, The Making of Americans,…
A Novel by Rachel Kushner, reviewed by Chris LudoviciTHE FLAMETHROWERS (Scribner) Early in Rachel Kushner’s occasionally frustrating but fascinating book The Flamethrowers, the protagonist sleeps with a man she’s only just met. She naively believes that her encounter with the…
A Graphic Novel by Ulli Lust, translated by Kim Thomson, reviewed by Tahneer OksmanTODAY IS THE LAST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE (Fantagraphics Books) Note: Lust’s memoir was edited and translated into English by comics visionary Kim Thompson,…
A Novel by Nina Schuyler, reviewed by Nathaniel PopkinTHE TRANSLATOR (Pegasus Books) I noticed, earlier this week, that my friend Cristina Vezzaro had been posting on Facebook in Dutch. This shouldn’t have surprised me. Still, I wondered, “Have you added…
Poetry by Leonard Gontarek, reviewed by Brandon LafvingHE LOOKED BEYOND MY FAULTS AND SAW MY NEEDS (Hanging Loose Press) Reading John Ashbery’s early works in college, I remember begging the poetry to make a goddamn point. My yearnings for intellectual…
CARNIVAL
by Rawi Hage
Norton, 304 pages
Reviewed by Nathaniel Popkin
Fly, the narrator of Rawi Hage’s fabulist novel Carnival, released in the US on June 17, is a literature-obsessed taxi driver—and child of circus performers—who imagines himself a super-hero, avenging wrongs perpetrated on the vulnerable and the poor. Books—particularly the subversive kind—are his sword. One night, he picks up an arguing couple. The woman, Mary, is crying. Her husband berates her for her introverted, bookish ways. He wants some action. “I am tired of this, do you understand?” he says.
Fly flies into a rage, forces the husband out of the car, leaves him by the side of the road, and brings “sweet Mary” back to his book-stuffed apartment. “And she laughed and walked among the garden of books,” he says, “and then we took off our fig leaves and made love in the corner, where verses from heaven touched our bare, cracked asses that hopped and bounced like invading horses in the holy lands.”
A Graphic Narrative by Audrey Niffenegger, Reviewed by Amy Victoria BlakemoreRAVEN GIRL (Abrams ComicsArt) At eighty pages, Audrey Niffenegger’s Raven Girl goes by quickly. We meet two improbable lovers, who have an improbable child, who finds love in her own (you guessed…
A Novel by Ken Kalfus, reviewed by Chris LudoviciEQUILATERAL (Bloomsbury USA) At its core, Ken Kalfus’s Equilateral is about communication: communication between an empire and its subjects; between visionaries and those who finance that vision; between the people who plan…
A Novel by Beth Kephart, illustrated by William Sulit, reviewed by Michelle FostDR. RADWAY’S SARSAPARILLA RESOLVENT (New City Community Press) When I lived in Philadelphia, I sensed its history underfoot. One pleasure of Beth Kephart’s lively new historical Philadelphia novel…
Eric G. MüllerBICYCLES AND FROG RAIN My brother and I followed Dad to the double garage. We were about to get new bicycles – our first. Five years earlier in Basel, Switzerland, I’d loved whizzing through the neighborhood on my…
Kat CarlsonBABY PICTURES We are looking at pictures of my cousin’s new baby. My cousin is nineteen. I am thirty-two. My cousin is eight months pregnant with her second child. I’m on my period. Everyone agrees that yes, it would…
George DilaTHAT SUMMER That was the summer his partner of 54 years died, brain-stroked down to the old kitchen linoleum while he, sweating under a brutal July sun, weeded their half-acre garden. They had had their lunch, remnants of last…
Kathryn HellersteinMY WRITER’S BLOCK It depends how you define writer’s block, whether or not I am experiencing it at this very moment. At sunset yesterday, as I swam my laps, I thought through this essay and decided exactly how I…
Jenny Wales SteeleKEEP THE CHANGE Pizza boy. Howdy. Smug leer, velvet bathrobe. Wobble of warped vinyl, glint of mellow light on it, a diva panting towards a climax. Twelve fifty, sir. Thank you. Grazie. Keep the change, beautiful pizza boy. …
Mark LyonsTHE PLACE OF THE RED-FOOTED ROOSTER IN THE HIERARCHY OF SENTIENT BEINGS A story from the Eleventh Year of Emperor Bunsei (1829), based on a true event I am not famous, but my rooster is immortal. I am the…
Nathaniel Popkin“THE DIG” From LION AND LEOPARD (The Head and the Hand Press, October 2013) Charles Willson Peale, Belfield, November 24, 1818 I woke at half past four, drank two glasses of water, and with the wind in my eyes,…
Nissa LeeTWO POEMS BEFORE GOING OUT after a painting by Fuco Ueda I. About one in every 10,000 doe-eyed girls grow horns. These rare creatures enjoy drawing lines in the dirt and leaping over them for play. When thirsty, they…
Mike HarperI DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO SPELL SPONDYLOLISTHESIS Your numb legs were just like Granny’s in her iron lung, and you folded slowly onto yourself before they put you back like expensive origami. This was when I learned what an…
Chris LudoviciDAISY Rebecca Saunders was mean. She was the meanest girl in the fourth grade, the meanest girl in school, maybe the meanest girl ever. It wasn’t that Daisy wanted to think that way about Rebecca Saunders, or anyone else…
Roger LeatherwoodROLLING EMPTY Walking home from the theatre starting at 11:40 at night, I’d be 20 minutes out when I passed the hillsides and into the canyon with the single four-lane connecting the suburbs, through the open land and sky…
Jamie-Lee JosselynDISPATCH FROM THE CAT SHOW Pulling into the parking lot of The Riveredge, a banquet hall in Reading, Pennsylvania, a wave of glee rushed over me. I scanned the rows of SUVs and minivans for the now-familiar “I ♥ my…
DUCKPIN BOWLING WITH CAITLIN AND BUFFALO BILL
by Timothy Kenny
Buffalo Bill’s
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death
-- E.E. Cummings
398px-Atomic_Duckpin_Bowling_EntranceCaitlin scoots first into our local bowling emporium (small town/duckpin only), where we are met by the same musty/mildew odor that has always greeted us, despite a new birthday-view rug that rolls colored confetti and pointed hats and noise-making horns across the floor. The old indoor-outdoor carpeting has fled, leaving dead air to hang in its place, a week-old washcloth on a sink.
We grab shoes. Caitlin slides on the polished lanes, a “watersmooth-silver stallion,” which kick-starts Buffalo Bill inside my head. The bowling guy -- a high school kid, really -- drops the bumpers into the gutters and we’re off: first her, then me, then she, then me, back and forth, we’re counting pins, writing down numbers, carrying ones over into the next column. A half hour later it’s the tenth frame and the final score is Caitlin 73, me 72, a dad’s duckpin-bowling miracle.
We go to pay. The gray-haired lady behind the desk who earlier handed out smooth-bottomed shoes that Velcro for convenience right off the bat tells me about the senior league that meets Monday and Thursday mornings.
Bill BrownTWO POEMS OPENINGS Blessed is the sick day. / Blessed are things that open / for no reason. –Lorraine Doran Let’s say a brother’s left hand opens and closes on his coffee cup. A lover’s face opens when someone…
Randi WardTHREE POEMS CLOTHESLINE Thank you, gentle breeze, for reaching out to me through his indifferent sleeves. PEONIES What do honey bees and black ants discuss inside drooping peonies? SPRING Threads its jagged hook through my budding backbone— violent squalling.…
YOU WERE GOING TO TELL ME
by R. C. Barajas
I’m sorry - you were going to tell me something shocking. I’m ready to hear it, but I may sleep instead. I know you won’t take it personally.
I’ve been listening to music. Tiptoeing across the albums of my recent youth, times so far gone they show themselves to me in crayon colors. Of late, it’s been 60s stuff, and my stereo serves up a docile, or raunchy replay of memories. Convenient, because as you’ve seen, I doze off so easily. I’m tossed back and forth from then to now without much warning. Sleeping and waking are so entirely alike that I scarcely bother to differentiate anymore.
Eva LomskiTHEY SHARED A FISH The girl wondered if he was naked under the sheet. The young man lay on his stomach on a bed trolley positioned in the sunniest spot in the courtyard. Weeds shimmied in the cracks. The…
Daniel TordayAIR CONDITIONER I recently had a difficult argument with my Aunt Lucille about turning up an air conditioner. My wife and I were staying with my aunt in Baltimore for a weekend where, after all, air conditioning was necessary…
Jen KaretnickNIGHT SWEATS They rise upon you, flood you in the neighborhood of sleep where once-solid canyons of breasts, hips, knees, parched from breath, west of age, have slipped, begun to crack. It’s not that there’s a lack of cool…
Anna Strong from APOSTROPHES “Hockey” This poem will be mostly about force. With one finger on my knee my science teacher tells me I can skate better than half the guys on varsity and I should really try out for…
Rachel B. GlaserTurid The girl was bored and wandered. She did not care if she was tagged, no one could force her to play. If she was It, she would not react, she would continue looking at the Wilsons’ plants,…
Amber Lee DoddCROCODILE HANDS Like blind men feeling for pictures Anna and Chloe had felt for differences in their matching faces. Eyes closed Anna could feel the little kink in the bridge of Chloe’s nose, a dimple when she smiled…
Kate LaDewTHE SONG IN A CLOUD Willard was always humming to himself. Whenever Tom saw him, he was humming and looking up and smiling and sometimes not smiling, sometimes looking even sad, but always humming. Tom thought Willard might be…
Carly GreenbergWASH, RINSE, REPEAT There are so many cycles to choose from. Bulky, delicate, perm press. The dial shifts from one setting to the other. Darks, whites, colors. It turns clock-wise and back. Hot, warm, cold. A tablet is loaded,…
Leah KoontzBIPRODUCT: Drag, Societal Identity, and Gender Equality BiProduct is a project I embarked on which considers drag queens, art, female expectations, and the media. This series features four of my works which address gender roles, equality, and social construction.…
Rich IvesCAREFULLY WRAPPED FESTIVAL OF DISCOVERY There was a sadness and hearts went in there where it was waiting a small boat on the riverriver of what’s next the rope you can’t see rope with a private moon at the…
Luke StrombergMEMORIAL DAY When you were a boy, did you dream that street And wonder where it was? Did you dream Of death in an exotic locale? Iraq— its bicycles and minarets. Its men And their sweat-shined, mustached faces On…
Anya LichtensteinBEATING PLOUGHSHARES INTO iPODS As a Conserva-dox Jew by upbringing and agnostic by nature, I don’t know whether I believe in the afterlife. Sometimes I’m certain that we are all just worm food. Other days I can feel my…
John CarrollJOURNALISM No one in my family talks about Uncle Terry, or why there never was a funeral. We did have a wake. We gathered at his house. The priests came in turtlenecks and polo shirts. My mother hovered by…