Letter to the Reader:

Will History be Kind?


I watched closely, with an almost morbid curiosity, as the tragic events unfolded in Japan. And, as the dust began to settle, and a fuller extent of what had occurred was slowly revealed, I couldn’t help but have the nagging inner feeling about the human folly we have been following before that unreal display of sheer, raw natural power. What we call the news is just that; folly and distraction, and not news, when compared to the awesome powers that surround us, which we humans have little control over, and which we often choose to ignore.

I couldn’t help but wonder just how much information and history would be lost if the most plugged in society on earth was suddenly without electricity. And what if we went blank? Would all the excellent work we at the Neworld Review have published, be lost forever?

This self-centered line of thought was spurred on by a discovery I made at the same time, as I googled myself:  that the first literary magazine I founded, Black Creation, first published in 1969 by the Institute of African Americans Affairs at NYU, was selling on EBay at a starting bid of $750 per issue.

My first reaction -- looking in almost disbelief at such a price, when I had only put a dollar on the cover -- was total elation. But the more I thought about how, over the years, I have watched as those back issues of Black Creation steadily climbed from $25, to $75, to $150, and now this exorbitant price of $750, I felt momentarily that maybe I should call a lawyer.

I immediately dismissed that thought. Obviously, someone who owns back copies of Black Creation are free to do whatever they want with them. So I just started wallowing, instead, in the glory that collectors think that my old magazine is so highly valued.

So what of the Neworld Review? I can see why Black Creation is now so valuable; it captured a time in American history when African American writers stood center stage. The Neworld Review is more about how we Americans are currently working our way through this new world that they helped create.

Could the Neworld Review ever become such a precious example of American creativity, at a certain time and place, with collectors bidding for us in unimaginable amounts? 

Who knows what awaits us in this new world. Maybe history will be kind.

But if the plug is pulled, did we even exist?

***

I recently had a long conversation with staff writer and novelist Molly Moynihan concerning her latest column, “Being Flamed,” because it brought back mixed memories of both grand vindication and abject disappointment. The line in her article that best describes the feelings that were brought to the fore for me was: “While I don’t agree that all publicity is a good thing, the fact is publishing is a public act and the public will often have something to say.”

Quite right, Molly.

When my first book, my collection of essays, The Rejected American, came out, the public had much to say, and much of it was good; in fact, for me, it was great because I was just glad to be reviewed, no matter what they said.

Then my novels started appearing, and that’s when some of the public turned mean, angry, and to me, downright disrespectful. When the condemnations first started, I felt as if I had been punched in the stomach by Joe Frazier. I had no idea fiction could provoke so much passion.

The public had spoken, and told me in clear terms to stay as far away from a computer as I possibly could. Luckily for me, I didn't take their advice. But this is what all creative writers face, and why I try to make sure they have a fair hearing at the Neworld Review.

Thank you clicking on to us, and may history be kind to all of us.


Fred Beauford

Editor-in-Chief
/Publisher



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Neworld Review
Vol. 4 No 19 - 2011

Editor-in-Chief
/Publisher

Fred Beauford

Art Director

Bernie Rollins

Managing Editor

Margaret Johnstone

Editor-at-Large

Jan Alexander

Senior Editors

Herb Boyd
Jill Noel Shreve

Online Managing Editor

Richard D. O'Brien

Director of Photography

Kara Fox

Contributing Writers


Jane M McCabe: History
Loretta H. Campbell
Sarah Vogelsong
Janet Garber
Sally Cobau
Michael Carey
Katherine Tomlinson
Lindsey Peckham: Art Beat
Molly Moynahan: Writers' World

The Neworld Review is a publication of Morton Books, Inc. Rob Morton, President/CEO, in cooperation with Baby Mogul Productions, 123 Town Square Place, Suite 384, Jersey City, N.J. 07310, 201-761-9084.

Material in this publication may not be reproduced in whole or in part without permission. Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of the publishers.

Manuscripts should be accompanied by a self-stamped envelope. Online submissions are accepted at [email protected].

Neworld Review cannot be held responsible for unsolicited photographs or manuscripts.

All correspondence to:

Fred Beauford

Editor-in Chief/Publisher

123 Town Square Place,
Suite 384,

Jersey City, N.J. 07310


[email protected]



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This Month's Articles

REVIEWING

Skin, Inc. Identity Repair Poems

by Thomas Sayers Ellis


OUTSIDE THE BOX

Reviewed by James Petcoff


It has taken me several weeks reading and rereading the poems of Thomas Sayer Ellis and I am now beginning to see the light.  Poetry, like music, must be heard to have its fullest impact. Words on a piece of paper, just like musical notation, are nothing without a delivery system.  It is the immediate connection between the poet reading aloud to an audience that gives poetry life, and it is in the response of the audience from the delivery system that creates the poetic experience.

One

The old style of representing “likeness” is over
and perform-a-formers, though appreciative of
metaphor and simile, no longer need either to
express nuance in poetry. The matrimony of page
and stage insists on eliminating the false functions
between the line and the limb. All rhyme schemes
.....
Read More



MEMOIR

What is it and why bother?

by Jill Noel Shreve


I have a photograph.

Chocolate-brown paneled walls fill the background of the photograph. In the foreground sits a woman. She’s the purpose of the photo. The photo stops at her chest, only giving the woman’s face and neck and shoulders. Her maple-sugar colored hair coils in tight, short curls on the top of her head. Her cream-colored forehead stretches high and wide. Gold-rimmed glasses perch on her nose. Her faint eyebrows rest over her hydrangea-colored eyes. Cloud-colored shadow highlights her lids. Gold shrimp hoops hang from her earlobes, one looks to dangle lower than the other. Layers of cabernet-colored gloss cover her lips and pink petal powder rests high on her cheek-bones. Her jaw slopes down toward a chin that curves rather than angles. Her neck quickly vanishes under a round-collared, nearly black blouse. I can make out the faint outline of deep violet roses within the folds of the blouse. A large, wilted satin bow—a bow the color of ripe dewberries—droops just under the blouse’s collar. The woman sits with impeccable posture on a high-backed wooden chair that almost fades into the chocolate-brown panelling.....Read More



REVIEWING

One Page at a Time: On a Writing Life

by Pat Carr


Reviewed by Sarah Vogelsong


Pat Carr’s One Page at a Time: On a Writing Life is an odd book. Framed as a memoir of a woman writer, I wanted to like it—even today, there is a dearth of major women writers in American letters, and so a book that promised to look thoughtfully at the development of one sparked both my interest and hope. The first page seemed to fulfill my expectations. Broaching the question of “why I became a writer,” Carr offers an intriguing explanation: “I may have come to stories simply through the lies the adults in my life told.”

Right away, I folded down the corner of the page to mark it as a potent idea deserving further attention, and then moved, with.....Read More



NOVEL

The African Gentleman


…and The Plot to Re-establish The New World Order


A Novel by Fred Beauford


Chapters 12-16


12

As I later pondered Gladys' story, and my reaction to it, I realized that I had acted in a manner I had promised her I wouldn't. My hopes of being a leading man in her next novel had been severely diminished. When I visit Assai later this week at the detention center where he was being held, I will add this to the many questions I have for him.

13

My brief talk with Assai was barely worth the trip. He was still being held on what I now know are conspiracy charges but I remain in the dark as to what he was conspiring to do. I do know that our company was not implicated, and thank the Lord, or whoever else, we are carrying on the.....Read More



A WRITER'S WORLD

"Being Flamed"

by Molly Moynahan


Getting reviewed is the result, good or bad, of being published. Back in the day, reviews came after your publishing date. Depending on the marketing efforts of your publisher, you might have multiple reviews or just a few. Newspapers contained the majority of reviews followed by magazines and then radio. Reviews were sometimes nasty but at least they were limited in their scope.

“Like being locked in the closet with a hysterical adolescent.” That was.....Read More



REVIEWING

Endgame

by Frank Brady


Reviewed by Michael Carey


“What do you know about Bobby Fischer?” I was asked before starting Frank Brady’s Fischer biography, Endgame. I knew he played chess and was a young prodigy.  Moreover, I thought that he was “gone,” something I learned from a SNL skit from the mid-90s that involved the Spartan cheerleaders at a chess match chanting, “Bobby Fischer, where is he?  I don’t know!  I don’t know!  He’s gone!” 

Brady’s Endgame informed me that although the chess great was a fugitive from.....Read More



PORTFOLIO

Portfolio

by Kara Fox


It comes as no surprise that Michael Freund presents to the world great creative expression. Born in Vienna, the son of a member of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Michael grew up surrounded by classical music. He claims it flows in his blood. At the early age of 15, he left high school to begin studying the harp. Michael was the youngest officially enrolled student at Vienna's 'Hochschule Fuer Musik Und Darstellende Kunst,' the famed conservatory. At 21, drawn into modeling and other distractions, he moved to New York City. Now, almost 22 years later.....Read More



REVIEWING

Padre Pio—Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age

by Sergio Luzzatto


Translated by Fredrika Randall
Metropolitan Books


Reviewed by Jane M McCabe


For a Capuchin friar hidden away in the half-empty San Giovanni Rotondo monastery on the remote Gargano Peninsula in southern Italy, September 20, 1918, was fateful day. Around nine that morning, while Padre Pio of Pietrelcina was praying before a crucifix in the monastery chapel ‘a mysterious personage’ materialized before him, a figure bleeding from his hands, feet and his side. Alarmed, the thirty-one-year-old priest begged for God’s assistance. The figure disappeared immediately, but Padre Pio’s alarm only grew when he saw that Jesus’ stigmata were now visible on his own body. ‘I look at my hands, feet and side and see they are wounded and blood is pouring out,’ he wrote to his spiritual adviser. ‘All my innards are bloody and my eye must resign itself to watch.....Read More



ART BEAT

Art Beat- March 2011

by Lindsey Peckham


Andrew Jones


Known mostly for his beautiful “stoopscapes” that detail the ornate facades of West Village brownstones bathed in sunlight, Andrew Jones has recently branched out and begun painting breathtaking landscapes, recently on display at the Salmagundi Gallery. Drawing inspiration from the beauty of nearby Weir Farm in Connecticut (full disclosure: I have an admitted soft spot for Weir Farm as I grew up five minutes from this gorgeous haven for local artists), his renderings of the sun-dappled trees have a dreamy, maze-like quality to them. These new works retain the abstracted realism that defines his stoop-works, while taking it to a different level. Andrew Jones, city mouse, meet Andrew Jones, country.....Read More



REVIEWING

The Other Life

by Ellen Meister


Reviewed by Janet Garber


Port Me No Portals

Life may be going on right this instant in another dimension, mirroring our own, while diverging in some unsuspected particulars.  Of course there are the scientific speculations (Many-Worlds theory), religious interpretations (Hinduism and Islam) and legions of sci-fi renditions.

In the 90’s TV show, Sliders, teenager Quinn Mallory (Jerry O’Connell) and his buddies went “sliding” into a different alternate universe every week.  Sometimes the new world looked like a perfect replica until they found that penicillin had never been discovered, or dinosaurs still strutted their stuff, or red-lipped vampires were fronting rock bands.  Always the crew decided to try to get home one more time, nothing being quite as alluring to them as the life they left in “Kansas.”

Ellen Meister puts this time-honored device in the service of one young mother, Quinn Braverman, who, from a young age, senses that she has the ability to move into another world via portals which appear as fissures.....Read More



REVIEWING

Shadow Tag

by Louise Erdrich


Reviewed by Sally Cobau


In Louise Erdrich’s newest book, Shadow Tag, the reader is privy to a fictional diary (actually two fictional diaries, but I’ll get to that in a moment); what we are not privy to in real life are court documents relating to the accusations that Michael Dorris, Erdrich’s estranged husband at the time, sexually abused one of their children.

This book is primarily about two things—escape and possession.  It circles.....Read More