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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Sniper; a novel by Pavel Hak. Editions Tristram, 2002. Trans. 2005 by Gerry Feehily, 121pp $14.00 paperback. ISBN 1-852-42856-2

A review by Eric Solomon

This short (121 small pages) “war novel” needs genre classification. Brief war novels are not anomalies: Tolstoy’s Sebastapol, Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, March’s Company K are quick examinations of battle’s grim horrors. Pavel Hak follows a pattern of eschewing character development and plot creation to concentrate on terror in the tradition of Holocaust narrative. The unwary reader of Sniper, however, is unprepared for (more…)

The C.S. Lewis Chronicles: The Indispensible Biography of the Creator of Narnia Full of Little-Known Facts, Events and Miscellany; a biography by Colin Duriez. BlueBridge Books, 298 pp$14.95 paperback. ISBN: 0-974-24058-3 A review by George W. Tuma

Most biographers have generally followed Dryden’s dictum in 1683 that a biography presents the “history of particular men’s lives.” Furthermore, the biographer usually sets forth the history of the individual so that a unified interpretation of the person’s life is made available to the reader. Colin Duriez, however, in his biography of C.S. Lewis clearly views the term “biography” in a rather different fashion (more…)

Selected Poems; by Ann Yearsley. Ed. Tim Burke, foreword by Donna Landry. The Cyder Press, xxiv+88 pp. £5, softcover only. ISBN 1-86174-1324. A review by William J. Christmas

     Ann Yearsley, the milkwoman-turned-poet from Clifton, has always been known more for the extraordinary circumstances of her poetic career than for the poetry she actually produced. To be sure, hers is a remarkable story of discovery near death, development under patronage, and fiercely fought-for independence. (more…)

Review of Philippe Vasset, Script Generator;©®™, translated by Jane Metter, Serpent’s Tail Press, 2004.

A review by James Kohn.

Just as the film “Last Year at Marienbad” teased an earlier generation with its innovative and creative story-telling, so Philippe Vasset’s hyper-novel teases the modern-day reader of adventure fiction. For the chapters of this novel of intrigue are interspersed with pages taken from a presumed software product, the “Script Generator” of the title. (more…)

Red Hen Press, 2003.

A Review by Harriet Rafter.

You know the story: a man, or a family, but usually two people, wander through the California countryside searching for a job, a home, a community, a new life. They may ride in a jalopy, or on a horse, but typically they straggle on foot, though the deserts, or the mountains, or the central valley–those sites of potential plenty, which our heroes pray will yield them gold or glory or at least physical sustenance. (more…)

Eat Everything Before You Die: a Chinaman in the Counterculture; a novel by Jeffery Paul Chan. U. of Washington Press, 304 pp., $22.50 hardcover. ISBN: 0-295-98436-8

A review by George Leonard

Jeffery Paul Chan is the new Henry Miller; or Toni Morrison, take your pick. Miller, Morrison and Chan are prose poets, who construct their plots like serial monologs in chains of modernist set pieces.
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