The Rienner Anthology of African Literature
Edited by Anthonia C. Kalu. Lynne Rienner, Publishers Boulder, London 2007. pp. i-xiii,1-976 $125. ISBN: 9781588264916
Reviewed by Saul Steier, San Francisco State University.
You know a field has “arrived” when its rich content is such that it is no longer possible to represent it adequately with random selected individual works. The publishing sign of that moment of arrival is the “Anthology.”
Revolutionary Spirits: The Enlightened Faith of America’s Revolutionary Fathers by Gary Kowalski. BlueBridge, 2008. 215 pages. $22.00. ISBN: 1 933346094
Reviewed by Harriet Rafter, San Francisco State University.
What were the religious beliefs of the men we consider this country’s Founding Fathers: Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Paine, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison? Did they intend the country they helped to create to be Christian? Were they observant Christians themselves? Would their religious beliefs and practices pass muster with those self-styled “values voters” whom American politicians now feel and fear they must court? These are the questions that Gary Kowalski asks in this short and informative book. Formerly this topic would have been an academic exercise, of scholarly interest only. Now that we are reminded daily of the enormous role that religion plays in world politics and events, the faith of these men assumes weightier importance.
Reasonable Doubts, by Gianrico Carofiglio. Bitter Lemon Press, October 2007. 249 pp. $14.95 ISBN 1904738249
Reviewed by George J. Leonard, San Francisco State University.
Since the SFHR is usually appealed to when works of merit can’t find appropriate reviews, we were slightly mystified to be sent the new legal thriller by Gianrico Carofiglio, which comes adorned with blurbs from the New Yorker and the London Times. “Carofiglio writes crisp, ironical novels,” the New Yorker’s reviewer tells us, “that are as much love stories and philosophical treatises as they are legal thrillers.” Reasonable Doubts is his third novel featuring a Guido Guerrieri, a public defender.
Elegy for an Age: The Presence of the Past in Victorian Literature, by John D. Rosenberg. Anthem Press, July 2005. 288 pp. $26.95 ISBN 1843311542
Reviewed by George J. Leonard, San Francisco State University
If I had to rest the case for the immortality of John D. Rosenberg’s prose on one paragraph, I could choose the paragraph in “Mr. Darwin Collects Himself”– unknown to me before I read Elegy for an Age– in which Rosenberg caps a series of perfect hammered sentences with the image of Darwin, the enthusiastic entomologist, “at the center of a worldwide network of researchers in a multitude of fields, all touching antennae at local scientific societies or through the penny post . . .” It takes a second for one to register the creepy appropriateness of that image for entomologists, and by then one has pictured them, tete-a-tete, feelers waving. Anyone interested in Darwin who reads that description will never willingly let it be forgotten.
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Gloryland, by Anne Marie Macari. Alice James Books (September 30, 2005). 75pp. paperback $14.95 ISBN 1882295501 Ruin, by Cynthia Cruz. Alice James Books (September 1, 2006). 80pp. paperback $14.95 ISBN 1882295587 Reviews by George Leonard |
From that strange house, Alice James Press, which consistently offers remarkable works that defy poetic fashion, come almost in the same mail, two books which reflect upon each other, and a central problem in poetry– and in the criticism of it: Gloryland by Anne Marie Macari and Ruin, by Cynthia Cruz. If I hadn’t read Macari’s work back to back with Cruz’s, I might have liked the Cruz better. The two titles offer an illuminating contrast: gloryland versus ruin.
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Sleepwalking Land, by Mia Couto. Translated by David Brookshaw. Serpent’s Tail (April 2006). 213pp. paperback $14.95 ISBN 185242897X Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali, by D. T. Niane. Pearson Longman; 2nd edition (August 7, 2006). 120pp. paperback $16.00 ISBN 1405849428 Reviews by George Leonard |
While Europe Slept, by Bruce Bawer. DoubleDay, 2006. 256pp. hardcover $16.29 ISBN 0385514727
Bewildering Complexities of Integrating Muslims into Europe
Review by Manfred Wolf
A recent book, “While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within,” dwells on the habitual looking away of liberal European elites from the problems posed by Muslim immigrants — a blindness and silence it regards as continuing to this day. The author Bruce Bawer claims that if Europe does not defend against its “Weimar Moment,” it will be destroyed from within. The Weimar Republic, it should be recalled, failed to take a stand against Hitler before he came to power.
Here, Bullet, poems by Brian Turner. Alice James Books, 2005. 71pp $14.95 paperback ISBN 1882295552
A review by George Leonard.
From the time of the Iliad until World War I, war was one of poetry’s central topics, yet now the subject seems taboo; as if all other artists were allowed to address this large and persistent area of human life except the poet. Even to write poetry involving war is suspect. Why? Why must the poet be excluded from the debate?
Bodies of Work, essays by Kathy Acker. Serpent’s Tail, 1997. Reprinted with an Afterword by Cynthia Carr in 2006, 179pp $16.00 ISBN 1852424850
A review by George Leonard.
When Kathy Acker died, the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State did something that I’d never seen before: they covered the wall of one corridor with a collage of pictures, notes, testimonials of homage and grief. Such was the passion that this unlikely poetic diva inspired. I only met her once, at a premiere of an Eleanor Antin film– a small, startling combination of piercings, muscles, and wild hair, unexpectedly gentle and affable for a woman working on Janis Joplin’s reputation.
Museum Skepticism: a History of the Display of Art in Public Galleries, by David Carrier. Duke University Press, 2006. xiii+313pp with bibliography and index. $16.00 ISBN 0822336944 Sean Scully by David Carrier. New York and London: Thames and Hudson, (224 pp, 190 color illustrations, 10 black and white.) $65.00 cloth. I-Shu Shi Xie Zuo [Principles of Art History Writing], by David Carrier, translated into Chinese by Wu Xiao Lai (297 pages, 40 color illustrations) Beijing: Renmin Daxue (People’s University Press) 2004, 49.80 yuan.
A review by George J. Leonard, San Francisco State University
In the summer of 2006, as baseball fans were watching Barry Bonds push his lifetime home-run total into the 720s, patiently chasing Hank Aaron’s record, those of us who follow aesthetics were watching David Carrier write his 11th 12th and 13th book, chasing his teacher Arthur Danto’s home run record. I had recently finished Carrier’s Rosalind Krauss and American Philosophical Art Criticism (2002), Writing about Visual Art (2003), and the catalog of a museum show he put together. (My favorite among his books remains The Aesthetics of Comics.) Today I review Carrier’s latest book, Sean Scully, and the Chinese translation of his Principles of Art History Writing, plus Museum Skepticism: a History of the Display in Public Galleries, Carrier’s book on the museum experience from Duke University Press, begun during a year at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
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