This Month's Articles

REVIEWING

Turn of Mind

by Alice LaPlante

Reviewed by Sarah Vogelsong

Novelists sitting down to work inevitably face two important decisions. The first concerns the content of the novel and the second concerns the form that that content will take, or the framework on which the story is hung. Human imagination is virtually boundless and the world is full of strange and fantastic stories, so the generation of cohesive and compelling content is itself no small feat—but it is the way in which an author approaches the second task of determining structure tha.....Read More

PROFILE

Call Him Ishmael!

A profile by Herb Boyd

As a matter of full disclosure, let me say from the jump that any objectivity I might have about Ishmael Reed was wiped out years ago.   In 1995, Robert Allen and I received the American Book Award for our anthology, Brotherman: The Odyssey of Black Men in America.  That award is given by the Before Columbus Foundation that jus’ grew from Ishmael’s fertile imagination.  Though the decision was rendered by the foundation’s board, I will always believe that.....Read More

Letters to the Editor

To the editor:

I really really enjoyed Janet Garber's review of Joy for Beginners, by Erica Bauermeister

It was witty, entertaining, and fair and made me laugh!  I suspect the review is much better than the book...but isn't that so often the case?

And how many times have I watched those  movies sometimes on the screen or on lifetime movie channel, some of the better ones taken from chick lit, feel-good, sisterly- themed books written by women, and at the end of the movie  my thoughts were, do most women really have a circle of such amazing, supportive, noncompetitive best friends?  Usually they take place in the south or the midwest.

But perhaps they are popular because - women really long for such friendships and it's so rare to really find them.  If you can't find Darcy, maybe you can find ..Darlene?

Amy Kool, New York, N.Y.

***

Great issue. Loved the photographs. Interesting article, (by Janet Garber) on women banding together to be supportive of one another.

Best regards,

Joy Woolley, Queens, New York

REVIEWING

Leche

by R. Zamora Linmark

Reviewed by Michael Carey

Before reading Linmark’s Leche, I had limited experience with Filipinos and even less knowledge of their history and culture. Linmark’s writing captures both and explores them with insight and humor while working through the story of the main character, Vince’s, search for home.

Vince is a gay Filipino American who moved to Hawaii from San Vicente in the Philippines at the age of ten to be with his parents. They had left him and his two siblings to be raised by their grandfather. His parents abandoned him. Years later, he is abandoned once again when his grandfather sends him back to his parents, where he witnesses their struggling marriage and eventual divorce. Vince has lost ....Read More

REVIEWING

Gryphon: New and Selected Stories

by Charles Baxter

Reviewed by Sally Cobau

Sleight of Hand:  The Enigmatic Stories of Charles Baxter

If you go to Charles Baxter’s website, you will be invited to ask the author a question—any question.  It seemed so perfectly “Baxter-ish” (at least the Baxter I knew from his stories and novels) so I set about formulating my question.  I think of Baxter as a heady writer, not lofty exactly, but sometimes his intelligence (or rather his characters’ intelligence) gets them in trouble.  (Their laziness/dreaminess gets them in trouble, too.)

Finally I decided on a rather bland question, although Baxter is far from a bland writer.  I asked him how his writing had changed since he’d gotten older.  I fired my e-mail into ....Read More

ART BEAT

Art Beat- July 2011

by Lindsey Peckham

Only the Lonely by Laurel Nakadate

I hinted back in June that there were quirky exhibits accompanying the epic dance parties at MoMa’s Queens outpost, PS1. This month I want to feature the work of Laurel Nakadate, whose corner of the museum I found the most fascinating exhibit I’ve seen in recent months. A combination of photography, video, and performance art, her work brilliantly straddles the line between inquisitive and perverted.

An attractive young woman herself, Nakadate explores the sexual power of the adolescent female in the eyes of older men, often using herself as bait and as an object of desire for complete strangers. Her early video work centered around her entering the homes of older men to dance, pose, or even play dead at their request. What struck me most was the balance of power in these encounters; Nakadate’s camera allowed ....Read More

A WRITER'S WORLD

Even Shakespeare had issues with his literary agent

by Molly Moynahan

"Let every eye negotiate for itself and trust no agent".

William Shakespeare

“O world, world! Thus is the poor agent despised. O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set a-work, and how ill requited! Why should our endeavor be so loved, and the performance so loathed?”

William Shakespeare

I have no idea whether Will’s agent was a friend or foe but it’s nearly impossible to get a writer to say anything about their agents other then expressing deep devotion, admiration or respect. However, they simply will say nothing about their former agents because who knows what horse’s head will end up in their literary safe place?

So, as usual, I will expose myself and speak of what has recently occurred between my literary agent and myself, a woman I was devoted to, admired and respected but have just divorced. I say divorced because.....Read More

REVIEWING

The Civilized World: A Novel in Stories

by Susi Wyss

Reviewed by Madeleine Mysko

Woven Stories

Some time ago, at a literary festival in Baltimore, I took a seat under a tent and heard Susi Wyss read from a story that I remember now as having been drawn from her years of working in Africa. Though I don’t recall the mention of a novel, I do recall the sense that I was listening to but a snatch of a larger narrative. That day in Baltimore, as the crowds drifted past the tent where a small but appreciative audience had gathered, I could feel the pull of strong threads at the edges of the brief passage Wyss read to us.

Now I have the pleasure of reading Susi Wyss’s debut novel, The Civilized World.  The novel bears a subtitle: A Novel in Stories. I’ll confess up front that, as a devotee of the short story—a form that commercial publishers tend to give short shrift in their quest for the next best-selling novel—I was put off by that subtitle, suspecting that it was just a marketing ploy to attract readers who pass over.....Read More

NOVEL

The African Gentleman

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

A Novel by Fred Beauford

Chapters 28-29

28

In a few days she gave me the manuscript. It was only 30 pages. It was entitled Dating in the Age of Fear. I slowly finished the few pages, still marveling at her considerable skill at avoiding naming her main characters, or even suggesting their race.

After I sat the manuscript down, I must confess, however, I was extremely disappointed.

Not that what she had written wasn’t compelling. It was, in fact, very compelling. But where was the modern day Count Vronsky, trim little mustache and all? And what on God’s good earth was Liz Gant doing prancing all over these pages? And for the first time since I had been reading her work, she named a character, Liz Gant of all people!

Gladys had been taking note all right, but not about me.

But, the truth be told, maybe I am just a bore, a dull bird, too dull to walk boldly on anyone’s pages. Maybe it was just my former actor’s vanity getting in the way of my.....Read More

REVIEWING

Kosher Chinese: Living, Teaching, and Eating with China's Other Billion

by Michael Levy

Reviewed by Janet Garber

Fun and Games in China

Most HR people will tell you that one of the most difficult tasks we encounter is the one assigned to me (“You’re HR; you do it!”) back in 1985: to tell an employee that she has B.O.  This was not a mild case either – fellow employees insisted they could not work in the same room.  They couldn’t breathe.  They suggested to me that maybe it was her exotic diet, too much curry in her food, and did those people really bathe as often as Americans?  Oy vey, I thought, I better intervene before this turns into an international incident or, more likely, a human rights discrimination case.

I brought the young lady into my office and asked casually about her morning routine.  I suggested that.....Read More

PORTFOLIO

Portfolio: Gerald M. Panter

by Kara Fox

If you build it, they will come,” a memorable line from the film, Field of Dreams. Fred Beauford wanted to present a showcase for talented photographers in Neworld Review, and from that time on, unique photographers came, and keep coming! The latest such artist is Gerald M. Panter. For the past thirty-five years his passion has been urban photography, and in this issue of Neworld Review, it is a delight to present “Eating on The Run".....Read More

REVIEWING

Leonardo to the Internet: Technology & Culture from the Renaissance to the Present

by Thomas J. Misa

Reviewed by Ken Liebeskind

A book that traces the history of technology from the Renaissance to the modern day has a lot to cover. One thinks of technology as a means to advance human culture and opportunity, but Thomas J. Misa’s  Leonardo to the Internet focuses on the ways it has been used to wage war, from Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings of gunpowder weapons to the development of nuclear bombs during World War II.

The book spans from discussions of Leonardo “exploded-view drawings for wheel lock assemblies and a magnificent drawing of workers guiding a huge cannon barrel through the midst of a bustling foundry”, to U.S. Brigadier General Leslie Groves, who spearheaded the uranium enrichment process prior to the development of the nuclear bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima

  

“The Hiroshima bomb,” Misa’s notes, was “a simple gun-type device code;.....Read More