This Month's Articles
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Hello Margaret,
Just wanted to tell you I thought that story, "An Exchange of Gifts,' by Rob Mohr in your current Neworld (VOl.4 NO. 17) was terrific. It explores with sensitivity our desires for deeper relationships...and the possibilities that seem so close yet so far away.
Sincerely,
James Tipton
REVIEWING
Bound
by Antonya Nelson
Reviewed by Sally Cobau
“You’re one of the few women reviewers we have who’ll review books by men.” My editor told me something to this effect and I felt a sort of smug satisfaction. Basically, I was just excited to relay this information to my husband, who claimed I only read books by women.
Actually some of my favorite authors are men—I count Richard Ford and Jay McInerney, whom I discovered in college with his “groundbreaking” (at least I thought so) Bright Lights, Big City, among my favorite writers. I also enjoy Sherman Alexie, T.C. Boyle, and Andre Dubus (as well as his son, Andre Dubus III, who has written short stories and the excellent House of Sand and Fog, but it’s true that I went through a period (OK, a decade) when I focused almost exclusively on women writers.
Perhaps in my late teens and twenties, I wanted to know what men thought and felt—what moved them, what filled.....Read More
REVIEWING
Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
by David Eltis and David Richardson
Yale University Press | 307 pages | $50.00
Reviewed by Loretta H. Campbell
The transatlantic slave trade built the wealth of Europe, certain African countries, and all of the Americas as outlined in the prodigious research of this book. Using 200 maps, it depicts 500 years of international trafficking in human beings. The information is separated into 6 parts (chapters) created and annotated by authors David Eltis (The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas) and David Richardson (director, Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation). Both of these historians and scholars of African-American history also serve on the Electronic Slave Trade Datebase Project at Emory University.
The book immediately answers the question of why these Africans were enslaved. The answer is the greed of their captors. Precious minerals like gold and silver were mined in South America by Africans enslaved by the Spanish and Portugese. However, the minerals were eventually supplanted by the major drugs of the day: tobacco, coffee, rum, and sugar. Today's science has declared all of these products addictive. Certainly their addictive.....Read More
PORTFOLIO
Portfolio
by Kara Fox
Thomas Sanders is a unique photographer with a rare talent for capturing the essence of the elderly.
His passion for photography began in his junior year of high school in Sonoma, CA. His grandfather, Willis Sanders, a noted photographer in his own right, taught Thomas about portrait lighting, which served to ignite his passion for portraiture. (Willis is best known for his portraits of Ernest Hemingway on his boat, the Pillar, in Cuba, which is a part of the Smithsonian collection)
.In his senior year at Cal Poly, Thomas began to photograph WWII veterans. Upon graduation, he moved to Los Angeles where he was commissioned by Belmont Village Senior Living Communities to travel around the country and photograph veterans. This was a dream come true for him. His goal for the WWII project was to have a book published on these men's.....Read More
REVIEWING
Separate Beds
by Elizabeth Buchan
Reviewed by Janet Garber
All in the Family
There’s an old Jewish folktale about a poor man in a shtetl living with his wife, children and in-laws. He goes to the Rabbi complaining about the noise and chaos in his home. Week after week, the Rabbi urges him to let the cow, goat, chickens and pig into the one-room dwelling. When the man reaches the breaking point, the rabbi permits him to remove the animals one by one. The man is ecstatic: “Rabbi, I have such peace and quiet, it’s unbelievable, “What a lucky man am I!” Sometimes this story is entitled, Things Can Always Get Worse.
Separate Beds echoes this story line: An affluent working couple have all the material amenities they could possibly want, but are emotionally estranged from themselves and, to some extent, their children. Then the Big Bad Recession knocksat the door. Tom, paterfamilias, loses his prestigious job at the BBC and he and his wife, Annie, suddenly have to pare back on their lifestyle. His aging Mom moves in with .....Read More
REVIEWING
The Voice Across the Veil
by Sue Scudder
Reviewed by Barbara Snow
Books that give us insight into our lives become friends we revisit. The Voice Across the Veil, by Sue Scudder, is such a book. Increasingly, quantum physicists document the holographic and multi-dimensional nature of our world, while literature on verifiable, near-death experiences corroborates those concepts with personal anecdotes.
Sue Scudder nearly died when her body had an allergic reaction to general anesthesia. In clear and detailed language she describes her experiences, and more importantly, the effect on her life:
‘…the experience awakened an insatiable curiosity about the other side of life and all things mystical.”
Yet it was 19 years before the call came to begin the assignment given, a memory blocked until then.
“You are to help others crossing from one side to another, just as you are experiencing.”Souls would be drawn to her through her music and vibration. A gifted pianist, Scudder must work through intense discomfort to share her music. Also she must write a book triggered by a heart-breaking tragedy.
Human partners were given to her: three other women with related gifts who.....Read More
REVIEWING
CLEOPATRA, A Life
by Stacy Schiff
Reviewed by Jane M McCabe
When Alexander the Great died in 323 BC in Babylon, his far-flung kingdom came to be divided into four parts—the Ptolemic Kingdom of Egypt, the Seleucid Kingdom, including Syria and Palestine, the Kingdom of Pergamon in Asia Minor, and the Kingdom of Macedonia. Within months of Alexander’s death, Ptolemy, the most enterprising of his generals, laid claim to Egypt, the wealthiest of his territories, and the breadbasket of the ancient world. He and his successors built Alexandria into the most cultured city of its time, replete with a gymnasium, the biggest library in the known world, the splendid boulevard, Canopic Way, the fabled Lighthouse of Pharos, and numerous temples and palaces. The Ptolemies re-established the Hellenistic culture of Athens in Egypt. They ruled Egypt for nearly 200 years, until Cleopatra VII, its last ruler, died in 30 BC.
When Ptolemy found Alexandria’s library, he set out to gather every text in existence, some 100,000 scrolls. Alexandria’s patron saint was Aristotle and Euclid codified geometry there. Homer’s work was the Bible of the day. Eminent men in their fields wrote prolifically on medicine and....Read More
REVIEWING
WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY: Self-Control in an Age of Excess
by Daniel Akst
The Penguin Press | 2011 | 275 pages | $26.95
Reviewed by Michael Carey
The American Heritage Dictionary describes self-control as “Control of one’s emotions, desires, or actions by one’s own will.” However, in We Have Met The Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess, Daniel Akst proposes that this definition is inadequate. It gives no consideration to the conflicting desires present in all of us. To improve upon this definition, Akst acknowledges a hierarchy of human desires. First order desires are any old desires that may cross our minds, while second orders are the ones we actually want for ourselves. He writes, “What self-control doesn’t mean, in my book, is mindless self-sacrifice or knee-jerk self-denial. On the contrary, it represents an affirmation of self, for it requires not the negation of instinct, but its integration into a more complete form of character—one that takes account of more than just immediate pleasures and pains. The self-control I’m talking about means acting in keeping with your highest level of reflection.”
The author introduces the reader slowly to the excesses and temptations present in everyday life with staggering stats, figures, and examples. The Internet alone, for example, has made everything cheaper,....Read More
SHORT STORY
No Accounting for Taste
A Short Story by RM Krakoff
Sam kneels behind cases of Zingers, sweat rolling off his face, hiding from security guards and hears police sirens. He’s fearful of being caught but more concerned about having a heart attack and dying like this… hiding from cops in the Topeka Dolly Madison Warehouse.
Sam is not a criminal. He’s an accountant and a loyal employee. He’s placed himself in this unlikely situation and he can’t catch his breath.
Just a week ago, Sam had been satisfied with his life and would never have considered breaking into a business any more than he would think of jaywalking across Washburn Avenue. Sam is a model twelve year employee at the Accounting Center Inc.
As a CPA, his personal achievement is to balance at the end the day. There’s nothing else that seems to matter to him – just a balance sheet full of cells, data bars and equations.
The prominence of his 40th birthday has caused Sam to take a long, hard look at this life. He sat alone in his small, neat apartment, sipping red wine, trying to ascertain when and why his life became such a ritual of tedium.
Sam thought back to his school days, attempting to codify the events where his life turned into an arrangement of laws, rules and principles.
The cold hard truth struck Sam like....Read More
Art Beat - FEBRUARY 2011
Art Beat
By Lindsey Peckham
Cézanne’s Card Players at the Met
It’s no secret by now that I am a devout Francophile and 19th century art junkie, so imagine how tickled I was to learn that Cézanne’s card players were coming to the Met! The exhibit is everything that I’d hoped it would be: beautiful, informative, and intimate. The players in this famous work are depicted several times in oil studies, drawings and portraits, and they perfectly augment the famous painting and make the exhibit a true experience. It is a beautiful, indulgent trip through Aix-en-Provence, a welcome departure from.....Read More
NOVEL
The African Gentleman
…and The Plot to Re-establish The New World Order
A Novel by Fred Beauford
Chapters 8-11
8
I had invited Gladys over to my rather large, tastefully furnished apartment in The Village. Well, it wasn’t quite The Village, but it was large, and close enough for me to tell everyone that I lived in The Village.
Of course, my friends, and people I barely knew, but had met in bars, chose to believe me, because everyone wanted a friend who lived in The Village.
It took me many calls, and several weeks to set up this dinner. She either didn’t pick up, or if she did, always had something better to do, even though I assured her I was a great cook.
Again I wondered how she could possibly be a novelist. She obviously was very popular; the kind of wonderful, talented woman everyone in The City falls instantly in love with. How did she find the private space to write when everyone in town she met just wanted to hang with her and enjoy her company?
I learned, to my great surprise, that she lived across The River near where I worked, and that she had her own little private transportation mode, and could avoid the dreaded trains and buses.
My apartment was.....Read More
A WRITER'S WORLD
"I Remember…"
by Molly Moynahan
"Memoirs are a well-known form of fiction."
Frank Harris
"I've given my memoirs far more thought than any of my marriages. You can't divorce a book."
Gloria Swanson
"I thought, frankly, that it would be more pleasant to write a memoir than it was."
Jim Harrison
"Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door."
Saul Bellow
I have always read other people's memoirs with a fair amount of contempt. There, I admit it. Except for Fry's ridiculous drug-addled fairytale, which I read with disbelief. I barely made it through the first page without yelling, "Liar, liar, pants on fire!" My last book was supposed to be a.....Read More