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The Sixteen Satires
By Juvenal. 1998
Perhaps more than any other writer, Juvenal (c. AD 55-138) captures the splendour, the squalor and the sheer energy of…
everyday Roman life. In The Sixteen Satires he evokes a fascinating world of whores, fortune-tellers, boozy politicians, slick lawyers, shameless sycophants, ageing flirts and downtrodden teachers. A member of the traditional land-owning class that was rapidly seeing power slip into the hands of outsiders, Juvenal also creates savage portraits of decadent aristocrats - male and female - seeking excitement among the lower orders of actors and gladiators, and of the jumped-up sons of newly-rich former slaves. Constantly comparing the corruption of his own generation with its stern and upright forebears, Juvenal's powers of irony and invective make his work a stunningly satirical and bitter denunciation of the degeneracy of Roman societySelected works and incidental writings by the celebrated author of A River Runs Through It, plus excerpts from a 1986…
interview.In his eighty-seven years, Norman Maclean played many parts: fisherman, logger, firefighter, scholar, teacher. But it was a role he took up late in life, that of writer, that won him enduring fame and critical acclaim—as well as the devotion of readers worldwide. Though the 1976 collection A River Runs Through It and Other Stories was the only book Maclean published in his lifetime, it was an unexpected success, and the moving family tragedy of the title novella—based largely on Maclean’s memories of his childhood home in Montana—has proved to be one of the most enduring American stories ever written.The Norman Maclean Reader is a wonderful addition to Maclean’s celebrated oeuvre. Bringing together previously unpublished materials with incidental writings and selections from his more famous works, the Reader will serve as the perfect introduction for readers new to Maclean, while offering longtime fans new insight into his life and career.In this evocative collection, Maclean as both a writer and a man becomes evident. Perceptive, intimate essays deal with his career as a teacher and a literary scholar, as well as the wealth of family stories for which Maclean is famous. Complete with a generous selection of letters, as well as excerpts from a 1986 interview, The Norman Maclean Reader provides a fully fleshed-out portrait of this much admired author, showing us a writer fully aware of the nuances of his craft, and a man as at home in the academic environment of the University of Chicago as in the quiet mountains of his beloved Montana.Various and moving, the works collected in The Norman Maclean Reader serve as both a summation and a celebration, giving readers a chance once again to hear one of American literature’s most distinctive voices.Praise for The Norman MacLean Reader“A solid, satisfying, well-made body of work by a patient craftsman.” —Chicago Tribune“The Norman Maclean Reader fills out and makes more human the impressions of the restless, inquiring storyteller we saw in previously published works. In his writings, at their best, we too feel the thrusts and strains. He is a writer of great beauty, in his own terms.” —Financial Times“Weltzien has not only done great service for Norman Maclean’s readers, he has rightly expanded Maclean’s place in American literature . . . . For me, The Norman Maclean reader is discovered treasure.” —Bloomsbury ReviewSanctuary: The Preservation Issue (Conjunctions #70)
By Peter Straub, Diane Ackerman, Howard Norman, John Edgar Wideman, Rick Moody, Bradford Morrow, Joanna Scott, Dinaw Mengestu, Robert Kelly, Karen Russell, David Shields, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Peter Gizzi, Brian Evenson, Ann Lauterbach, Martine Bellen, Mary Caponegro. 2018
Exploring the myriad ways in which we go about preserving what might otherwise be forfeited. Whether trained specialists or lay…
people who care about something, preservationists come from every stratum of life. The archivist, the linguist, the local town historian. The paleontologist, the heirloom seed-saver, the family photographer, the Monuments Men. Old two-by-two Noah and taxonomist Linnaeus. The suburban girl who collects enough yard sale books to build up a library and thereby safeguards that most fragile of things: knowledge. All can be preservationists. This issue includes contributions from Diane Ackerman, Elizabeth Robinson, Peter Gizzi, Kyra Simone, Heather Altfeld, Richard Powers, Arthur Sze, Joanna Ruocco, Andrew Ervin, Julia Elliott, Jessica Reed, Peter Orner, Erin Singer, Daniel Torday, Toby Olson, Mary Jo Bang, Troy Jollimore, Maya Sonenberg, Rae Gouirand, Mauro Javier Cardenas, Nam Le, Maria Lioutaia, Bryon Landry, Rae Armantrout, Robin Hemley, Madeline Kearin, Donald Revell, S. P. Tenhoff, Debra Nystrom, Donna Stonecipher, Robert Karron, Andrew Mossin, J’Lyn Chapman, Frederic Tuten, and Marshall Klimasewiski.Inside Out: Architectures of Experience (Conjunctions #68)
By Joyce Carol Oates, Kathryn Davis, Bradford Morrow, Claude Simon, Robert Coover, Joanna Scott, Nathaniel Mackey, Frederic Tuten, Robert Kelly, Robert Clark, Mary South, Elaine Equi, Cole Swensen, Elizabeth Robinson, G. C. Waldrep, Ann Lauterbach, Can Xue, Susan Daitch, Lance Olsen, Matt Reeck, Brandon Hobson, Andrew Mossin, Gabriel Blackwell, Monica Datta, Ryan Call, Lisa Horiuchi, Lawrence Lenhart, Mark Irwin, Justin Noga, Karen Hays, John Madera, Karen Heuler. 2017
New writings—on rooms, buildings, and the spaces and structures that surround us—from Robert Coover, Joyce Carol Oates, Joanna Scott, and…
more. From huts to houses to high-rises, childhood bedrooms to churches, the spaces we occupy and pass through shape our memories and perceptions, often without our conscious awareness. These stories, essays, and poems from a wide variety of contributors draw on our sense of place to explore the literal and metaphorical meanings of the roofs over our heads, the walls that protect—and separate—us from others, and the caves and castles that humans have made their homes throughout history. Like the best architecture, they combine form and function in a beautiful balance. Conjunctions: 68, Inside Out includes original work by Joanna Scott, Andrew Mossin, Claude Simon, Cole Swensen, Robert Clark, Kathryn Davis, Elizabeth Robinson, Gabriel Blackwell, Monica Datta, Robert Kelly, Mary South, Brandon Hobson, Lance Olsen, Susan Daitch, Ryan Call, Nathaniel Mackey, Ann Lauterbach, Can Xue, Matt Reeck, Lisa Horiuchi, Elaine Equi, Robert Coover, G. C. Waldrep, Joyce Carol Oates, Lawrence Lenhart, Mark Irwin, Justin Noga, Karen Hays, John Madera, Karen Hueler, and Frederic Tuten.An Indiana Christmas
By Bryan Furuness. 2020
Imagine a moonlit railroad track, a rural road and barn covered with just a dusting of snow, a hound dog…
asleep by the woodstove, and a Red Ryder BB gun hidden behind the tinseled tree—all the makings of an unforgettable Indiana Christmas. In An Indiana Christmas, editor Bryan Furuness brings together timeless short stories, poems, plays, and letters to help you get into the holiday spirit. Lose yourself in classics like "In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash" by Jean Shepherd, which inspired the beloved movie A Christmas Story, and "A Feel in the Christmas Air" by James Whitcomb Riley, along with more recent literary works like "The Myth of the Perfect Christmas Photo Family" by Kelsey Timmerman and "While Mortals Sleep" by famed Indiana writer Kurt Vonnegut. To achieve the perfect combination of Christmas nostalgia and cheer, Furuness has curated Hoosier stories that allow you to experience an idyllic holiday gathering in "Indiana Winter" by Susan Neville, feel the excitement of a child on Christmas Eve with "Earthbound" by Barbara Shoup, and face the loneliness of a drifter on Christmas night in "Howard Garfield, Balladeer" by Edward Porter. The collection even offers the chance to read a Christmas war dispatch from the late, great Hoosier journalist Ernie Pyle. Heartfelt and unique, An Indiana Christmas paints a picture of what Hoosiers truly hold dear. Family, love, giving, hope, and faith shine through these poignant stories, which are sure to put you in good spirits for the holidays.A Cabinet of Curiosity (Conjunctions #71)
By Peter Straub, Diane Ackerman, Howard Norman, John Edgar Wideman, Rick Moody, Bradford Morrow, Joanna Scott, Dinaw Mengestu, Robert Kelly, Karen Russell, David Shields, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Peter Gizzi, Norman Manea, Brian Evenson, Ann Lauterbach, Martine Bellen, Mary Caponegro. 2018
Joyce Carol Oates, Ann Beattie, Diane Ackerman, and more explore the double-edged sword of curiosity . . . Curiosity is…
as central to life as breathing. And like breath itself, when it ceases, the vibrancy of life fades and disappears. Curiosity leads to discoveries both beneficent and, at times, destructive. It often occasions wonderment, but also terror. It prompts the precise scientist, but also the nosy gadfly. A double-edged sword, curiosity has forever held a crucial role in myth, literature, science, philosophy, history—nearly every field of human endeavor. While most of us know the old saying about curiosity killing the cat, we must also remember that “satisfaction brought it back.” Curiosity incites and compels, taketh away and giveth. In this issue, curiosity impels a personal assistant to learn hidden truths about her deceased employer—a famed playwright—and his relationship with the woman who directs an Italian arts foundation to which he donated his priceless library of first editions. A novelist, inspired by a different kind of curiosity, studies the traditional teachings of his Cherokee forebears after reading the notebook his beloved grandfather possessed when he died. Elsewhere, a young boy removes his clothes and, driven by dangerous curiosity, crawls into the gaping darkness of a sewer pipe, where he mysteriously vanishes, altering the lives of everyone who knew him. While most of the stories, poems, and memoirs here investigate the places where curiosity transports us—from forgotten burial grounds to natural history museums, from alluring lakes to postapocalyptic seaside shanties—A Cabinet of Curiosity also features a singular visit to an archetypal curiosity cabinet in Amsterdam with its treasury of specimens, of oddities in jars and on shelves, of things pinned and things afloat. Curiosity in all its guises is the wellspring of revelation. It is a prime mover behind our deeds, good or evil, simple or complicated. While the thirty-one writers gathered here individually explore many of the ways in which curiosity drives and defines us, together they propose that the realms of curiosity are, finally, inexhaustible. A Cabinet of Curiosity includes contributions from Laura van den Berg, Ann Beattie, Brandon Hobson, Eleni Sikelianos, Greg Jackson, Julianna Baggott, Jeffrey Ford, Joyce Carol Oates, William Lychack, Joanna Scott, Catherine Imbriglio, Dave King, Lauren Green, Can Xue (Translated by Karen Gernant, Chen Zeping), Nathaniel Mackey, A. D. Jameson, Quintan Ana Wikswo, Lynn Schmeidler, Samuel R. Delany, Kelsey Peterson, Sarah Blackman, Gerard Malanga, Martine Bellen, Maud Casey, Gregory Norman Bossert, Stephen O’Connor, Matt Bell, Madeline Kearin, Bin Ramke, Diane Ackerman, Elizabeth Hand.Being Bodies (Conjunctions #69)
By Maud Casey, Edward Carey, Rick Moody, Bradford Morrow, Kyoko Mori, Peter Orner, Elizabeth Gaffney, Nomi Eve, Stephen O'Connor, Sallie Tisdale, Carole Maso, Michael M. Weinstein, Aurelie Sheehan, Anne Waldman, Dina Nayeri, Forrest Gander, Rosamond Purcell, Jessica Reed, Mary Caponegro, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Bin Ramke, Sejal Shah, Samantha Stiers, Kristen Posehn, Alan Rossi, Gregory Norman Bossert, Fern Seiden, Jorge Ángel Pérez, Jean Osman, Emily Geminder, Michael Ives. 2017
The human body is admired, displayed, and dissected in this eclectic collection of stories, poems, and essays from Rick Moody,…
Edward Carey, and more. Being Bodies is an exploration of the complex circumstances of our flesh-and-blood existence. Our bodies dance; they’re inked; they contain prosthetics and implants. Our bodies are gendered, though not always correlative with how we perceive ourselves. Some use bodies for violence; some sacrifice their bodies for others. Our bodies are mortal, their days numbered. We do with them what we can and what we will. Through innovative poetry, fiction, and narrative nonfiction, thirty writers consider bodies as subjects; bodies as objects; bodies as loci of politics, illness, nature, artifice, performance, power, abuse, reward, disgust, and desire. Conjunctions:69, Being Bodies includes contributions from Rick Moody, Edward Carey, Carole Maso, Bin Ramke, Dina Nayeri, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Sallie Tisdale, Stephen O’Connor, Sejal Shah, Maud Casey, Samantha Stiers, Forrest Gander, Kristin Posehn, Nomi Eve, Rosamond Purcell, Alan Rossi, Aurelie Sheehan, Peter Orner, Gregory Norman Bossert, Mary Caponegro and Fern Seiden, Anne Waldman, Jorge Ángel Pérez, Jena Osman, Michael M. Weinstein, Emily Geminder, Elizabeth Gaffney, Jessica Reed, Michael Ives, and Kyoko Mori.Fairy Tale Review: The Aquamarine Issue #5
By Kate Bernheimer. 2015
The Aquamarine Issue is the fifth anniversary issue of Fairy Tale Review, and is appropriately its most oceanic, its most…
aesthetically diverse, issue to date. Despite this diversity the fairy tale pulse or "feel" is present in each piece in The Aquamarine Issue. What also contains this issue and holds it within the salt palace of tiny sea horses is how the narratives and poems, taken together in here, can be seen to contribute not only to the very important living body of contemporary fairy tales--so nascent and now--but also to the conversation about what constitutes "a fairy tale," that monumental type of art.Fairy Tale Review: The Emerald Issue #10
By Kate Bernheimer. 2015
Fairy Tale Review is an annual literary publication dedicated to publishing new fairy-tale fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. It seeks to…
expand the conversation about fairy tales among practitioners, scholars, and general readers. Contents reflect a diverse spectrum of literary artists working with fairy tales in many languages and styles. In the Emerald Issue, new stories, poems, essays, and artwork is inspired by the themes of "emeralds" and "Oz". In Frank L. Baum's introduction to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the author indicates that his story "aspires to being a modernized fairy tale" in opposition to the "historical" stories with all their "horrible and blood-curling incident".Fairy Tale Review: The Violet Issue #3
By Kate Bernheimer. 2015
"At an early age, children are weaned on the marvelous, and later on they fail to retain a sufficient virginity…
of mind to enjoy fairy tales," Andre Breton wrote in 1924. "There are fairy tales to be written for adults," he continued. "Fairy tales almost blue." Violet flowers are often described as "almost-blue," which is how this color was chosen. This issue of Fairy Tale Review focuses on fairy tales for adults.Fairy Tale Review: The Brown Issue #7
By Kate Bernheimer. 2015
Brown is the color of the wolf, of the harvest-ravaged farm, of thatched roofs, of cinnamon cake, of autumn, of…
snuff, of wooden boxes (bridal chests, watch cases, humidors, coffins). If ever there was a color more suited to earthly existence, it's the color of earth itself. And earthly existence is at the very heart of fairy tales, despite all the unearthly circumstances depicted.Fairy Tale Review: The Green Issue #2
By Kate Bernheimer. 2015
The sheer volume of responses to the first issue of Fairy Tale Review shows that fairy tales continue to be…
one of the most viable art forms. In fairy tales, all things are interdependent, mysteriously and insanely entwined. They contain a deeply ecological world. The Green Issue is devoted to new fairy tales, with a special consideration for nature. The unbridled individualism at work in the literary forms most dominant today devalues the natural world in relation to the human. In fairy tales, the human world and the animal world are collapsed. The collapse remains open to wonder and change. In this way, fairy tales provide the possibility for narratives to shine a different sort of terrible light on the natural world. This world is transparent, imperiled, abstract, and new. In this world, clarity and wonder go hand and hand.Fairy Tale Review: The Ochre Issue #12
By Kate Bernheimer. 2016
Ochre is the color of our earliest stories. It is the color we chose when we wanted to make paintings…
on the walls of caves, in places that never did learn the name of sunlight. By the grace of small fires we etched in ochre; we coughed at the smoke in a confined area but also the absurdity of things we would later call warmth and light and home. Ochre was the color that permeated our lives, slipped into our fingernails, found its way onto all our clothes, our bedspreads, and the skins of lovers. There is evidence of ochre in caves dating back twenty centuries BC: horses and bison and traces of human hands. The places we have touched, tried to remember. Our tongues made middens of ochre even when we couldn’t see. If fairy tales are a language, as Kate Bernheimer argues, then...ochre is the color in which that language must be written.Making Callaloo in Detroit: Stories
By Lolita Hernandez. 2014
The daughter of parents from Trinidad and Tobago and St. Vincent, Lolita Hernandez gained a unique perspective on growing up…
in Detroit. In Making Callaloo in Detroit she weaves her memories of food, language, music, and family into twelve stories of outsiders looking at a strange world, wondering how to fit in, and making it through in their own way. The linguistic rhythms and phrases of her childhood bring distinctive characters to life: mothers, sons, daughters, friends, and neighbors who crave sun and saltwater and would rather dance on a bare wood floor than give in to despair. In their kitchens, they make callaloo, bakes, buljol, sanchocho, and pelau--foods not usually associated with Detroit. Hernandez's characters sing and dance, curse and love, and cook and eat. A niece races to make a favorite family dish correctly for an uncle in the hospital, three friends watch an unfamiliar and official-looking man in the neighborhood, lovers and daughters cope with sudden deaths of the men in their lives, a man who can no longer speak escapes his life in imagination, and families gather to celebrate the new year with joyful dancing against a backdrop of calypso music. Hernandez's stories reflect the diversity of characters to be found at the intersection between cultures while also offering a window into a very particular and rich Caribbean culture that survives in the deepest recesses of Detroit. In addition to being a compelling and colorful read, Making Callaloo in Detroit explores questions of how we assimilate and retain identity, how families evolve as generations pass, how memory guides the present, and how the spirit world stays close to the living. All readers of fiction will enjoy this lush collection.Fairy Tale Review: The Yellow Issue #9
By Kate Bernheimer. 2015
This issue is themed around yellow: the color of my skin, my namesake, the color used to describe four billion…
plus Asians, and this doesn't even account for the diasporic population. Yellow, the color of diseased skin and diseased people. Yellow, the color of aging. All these denigrations contained in one color, none of which actually resemble the color itself. Because yellow is bright. It is electric. It inspires. And the works in this issue are as effulgent as yellow itself, but lurking--as yellow always lurks--is something sinister and bold, the color forcing itself up and out, revealing, transforming. Yellow yields metamorphosis.Fairy Tale Review: The Blue Issue #1
By Kate Bernheimer. 2015
The Blue Issue is the inaugural issue of Fairy Tale Review. Swiss scholar Max Luthi wrote about fairy tales as…
literary examples of abstract art. The strange quality that Luthi identifies as "firm form" is sparse, flat and depthless as it is wild, weightless and bright. The writing selected for the debut issue of Fairy Tale Review reflects this quality in a multitude of ways. The work in here is not beholden to any particular school of writing. Rather, each contribution uniquely dovetails with the aesthetics and motifs of fairy tales.Fairy Tale Review: The Grey Issue #8
By Kate Bernheimer. 2015
When we speak of grey as a location, placing a thing into a grey area, the color represents territory where…
the definite becomes lost. Grey lets us know that the truth is not always clear; even the most well-known paths can turn strange when a low grey cloud of fog rolls in. Grey is an act of subtraction, the loss of sun, joy, and color. Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs, said Dickens. Since grey is a symbol for the loss of youth, it seems a fitting issue for a theme about youth who are lost. Getting lost is one of the most widely used narrative vehicles of all time. Once characters become lost, they can stumble upon anything--it's a light-speed bullet train between credibility and suspension of disbelief. Falling down a rabbit hole or stepping off the trail in a labyrinthine wood can transport a character to another world entirely in a manner of seconds. When a protagonist starts to get lost, something exciting is about to happen.Fairy Tale Review: The White Issue #4
By Kate Bernheimer. 2015
"All great novels are great fairy tales," wrote Vladimir Nabokov many years ago, and Fairy Tale Review continues to believe…
that all great literary works owe everything to fairy tales. In this issue you will find work represented that draws from the spectacular, old tradition of fairy tales in brilliant new ways. An increased understanding of the precise and incredible fairy-tale techniques, so wonderfully elucidated by the scholar Max Luthi, but expanded, in the aesthetic of Fairy Tale Review, to contemporary literature across the styles and genres, may help resolve the unfortunate schisms that sometimes arise between so-called mainstream and avant-garde writers and critics. In this issue you will find work across so many such borders; some of the writing refers to specific fairy tales, but much of it simply feels like a fairy tale; and how it feels like a fairy tale is through language, through form. Please spread the word that fairy tales are the newest and oldest aesthetic; and they give our lives fearful, beautiful shape. Form is fairy tale, fairy tale is form.Fairy Tale Review: The Mauve Issue #11
By Kate Bernheimer. 2015
Mauve is a new word with old roots. The color's earlier incarnations--Tyrian purple (given for the shade of Roman emperors'…
cloaks) and aniline purple--were abandoned when, to increase the popularity of Perkin's dye, its sellers named the color after a French flower called the mallow. When we consult the dictionary, it tells us that the mallow is a herbaceous plant with hairy stems and pink or purple flowers. Its fruit comes shaped in wedges and so it is nicknamed the cheese plant. Mallows are grown as ornamentals, and mallows are grown as edibles. Some are for looking at, others are for eating. We want this issue to be both--a mallow, a marsh, a cake that defies old proverbs. Gaze at it. Eat it too. Consume, ravage, devour it. Why, go ahead and try it on, walk around in it as long as you like. Either way, we promise you'll look ravishing.Repair (Boston Review / Forum)
By Ed Pavlić, Ivelisse Rodriguez. 2022
How we can recover from terrible ruptures, the pandemic, toxic politics, racist horrors, class warfare, gendered violence, and ecological brinksmanship.Individually…
and collectively, we bear deep wounds. Some of these are generations old; all have been worsened by a destructive period of pyrrhic politics that left us ill-equipped to respond to a global health catastrophe. As we struggle to recover our footing and grieve our dead, Boston Review believes that the arts must have a voice in the conversation about how we heal. In this new anthology of poetry, fiction, and essays from renowned writers and newcomers, writers explore whether and how we can repair terrible ruptures, life-threatening illnesses and the pandemic, toxic politics, racist horrors, class warfare, gendered violence, and ecological brinksmanship. ContributorsAriella Aisha Azoulay, Kemi Alabi, Donia Elizabeth Allen, Don Mee Choi, Adebe DeRango-Adem, Emma Dries, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Randall Horton, Savonna Johnson, Kim Hyesoon, Maya Marshall, Colleen Murphy, Simone Person, aureleo sans, Bishakh Som, Olúfmi O. Táíwò, Meredith Talusan, Brian Teare, Yiru Zhang