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Holden Caulfield Syndrome
by Mark Mordue.
"I was watching Eminem on the television
when it hit me. The anger at the world, the stubborn yet lost boyishness, the weirdly
uncomfortable sexuality in spite of all his posturing, the feeling that everyone is a fake
but for him, the whole confessional art he's made his own, even the repetitive cursing...
'Wow, it's Holden Caulfield!' Mark Mordue gets caught up in an American disease.
Dominion:
The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy by Matthew
Scully - Review by Rachelle Annechino. "Dominion is a complex and moving inquiry into animal welfare
issues from the point of view of an avowed Christian conservative, Matthew Scully...
You’ll probably disagree with Scully on some points, sure, but respectfully.
And why bother to read a book if you expect to agree with everything in it?"
Consequence:
Beyond Resisting Rape - Review by Laura
Saiter. "What is street harassment? How far
does attention from strangers, specifically male-to-female, have to go to be considered
harassment?... After all, the world places so much importance on female beauty that we
could be led to take virtually any wanted or unwanted sexual attention barring direct
physical aggression as good attention."
Peter
Hessler's River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze. Review by Mark Mordue. "Peter
Hessler is certainly one of those writers who restore your faith in the travel
genre’s revelatory potential, even its nobility. His book River Town documents
the two years he spent as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching literature at a teachers’
college in Fuling, a small “by Chinese standards” town of some two hundred
thousand people in the Sichuan province."
Dirk
Wittenborn's Fierce People. Review
by Mark Mordue. "Bret Easton Ellis loves it. So does Jay
McInerney and Susan Minot. I guess that makes me suspicious
straight away... but I couldn’t put it down..."
Steve Earle's
Doghouse Roses. Review
by Mark Mordue. "Anyone
witness to a recent solo live tour by the rock musician Steve Earle would have no qualms
telling you about the greatness this aching bear of a man exuded on stage... Doghouse
Roses begins powerfully enough with a clearly semi-autobiographical tale about a country
musician addicted to heroin
and crack cocaine, being ferried out of L.A. by his emotionally exhausted record company
girlfriend... It's a knockout."
Shit Happens: Matthew Firth's
Can You Take Me There, Now? Reviewed by Chris
J. Robinson. "Canadian
writer, Matthew Firth, steps outside of the frames to
show us the grinders, the people who go into the shit
of life day in and day out without any acknowledgement,
without any hope of acknowledgment. For these characters,
life is a never-ending cycle of desire, to connect with
whatever small ounce of pleasure or joy they can grasp
from a life lived in society’s swamps." The
Shadow of the Sun: Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski's
new book on Africa -- Reviewed by Mark
Mordue. "Not
for him the life of a CNN or 60 Minutes luxury journalist,
or even the standard assistance major Western newspapers
provide their reporters. The
Shadow of the Sun details his struggles with cerebral
malaria and turburculosis, with insect-ridden rooms and
robbery, and an improvisational life that drives him closer
to ordinary African people and a far more humanistic,
intimate view than might otherwise have occurred." Same Journey, Same Miracle,
Same End and Endlessness: Nick Tosches's Where Dead Voices Gather
-- Reviewed by Chris J. Robinson. "Where Dead Voices Gather is also an excavation
of early 20th century American music... Tosches
travels from Homer to Dante to Jimmie Rodgers, Bob Dylan,
John Cougar Mellencamp and Matt Johnson of The The." The
Taste of Metal: A Deserter’s Story: Reviewed
by Chris J. Robinson. “"Ok,
go on.” The Canadian Customs Officer
had probably said those words a thousand times...
Little did he realize that with those three single syllable
yawns, he changed the course of a man’s life.
The passenger in the car that January 4, 1970 was
twenty-three year old Jack Todd. Todd was deserting the
American Army." Labyrinth
of Chaos: Reviewed by George
Getschow.
 The Not Entirely Unbearable
Writings of Richard Meltzer by Chris
J. Robinson.
Greg
Farnum reviews George
Saunders' second
short story collection, Pastoralia.
 "Looking
at Thirty Years' Writing" by Nick Tosches
Adopted from the introduction to The Nick Tosches Reader,
to be published in Spring: "As they said, I was not expected to make it through the
night. But they did not know that the night was mine... Somewhere, early on,
in the course of that river of dark night, I became a writer." |
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