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SEVERAL REVIEWS BY DON WEBB (6/16/94)
Name: Don Webb
Address: 6304 Laird Drive
Austin, TX 78757
Author of book reviewed: Gary Eller
Editor of book reviewed:
Translator of book reviewed:
Title:
Thin Ice and Other Risks
Name of press: New Rivers Press
Address of small press: 420 North 5th St. #910./
Minneapolis, MN 55401
Year of publication: 1994
Cloth and/or paper: Paper
Number of pages: 144
Price: Paper: $9.95 Cloth:
Biography: Don Webb recently completed a new book of short fiction
Ecaflow Revisted , as well as selling short stories to Rodger Zelazny's
Wheel of Fortune and Nancy Collins-Linahrt's Forbidden Acts.
Author of book reviewed: Rick Christman
Title: Falling in Love at the end of the World
Name of press: New Rivers Press
Address of small press: 420 North 5th St. #910./
Minneapolis, MN 55401
Year of publication: 1994
Cloth and/or paper: Paper
Number of pages: 114
Price: Paper: $9.95 Cloth:
Author of book reviewed: Carol Masters
Title: The Peace Terrorist
Name of press: New Rivers Press
Address of small press: 420 North 5th St. #910./
Minneapolis, MN 55401
Year of publication: 1994
Cloth and/or paper: Paper
Number of pages: 144
Price: Paper: $9.95 Cloth:
ABR sent me three volumes of the Minnesota Voices Project (62- Falling ,
63 - Thin , and 64 - Peace ) and asked me to review them as a group. A
process, I suppose not unlike a compare and contrast exercise in High
School. All three are winners of an annual competition "for the Upper
Midwest's new and emerging writers." All three are collections of short
prose. All thee are basically forms of Puritan autobiography -- as Tom La
Farge described once as, "Meaning meaning me." Each has it own problems
and promise. All are nicely produced, and feature good covers by Upper
Midwest artists. Both Falling in Love at the End of the World and The
Peace Terrorist are clearly based on their author's experiences, and Thin
Ice and Other Risks' voice is suggestive of autobiography. All contain
both previously published and new material.
Falling in Love at the End of the World
is a collection of Vietnam and post-Vietnam vignettes by Rick Christman.
The twenty one pieces center on one or two tableaus minimally but
skillfully described of a highly emotional nature. Some are
extraordinarily poignant such as the soldier's huge hand on the eleven
year old prostitute's head at the end of "Lan's World." As individual
pieces these vignettes would stand out for the emotional appeal, as a
collection they loose effectiveness, much as hearing the same chord struck
loudly on an organ over and over will do. The vignettes all have the same
pacing and style -- third person paragraphs without dialogue from the
point of view of essentially the same character -- a young soldier in the
early war, who had enlisted in the hopes that his smarts would send him to
language school rather than waiting around to be drafted for Vietnam.
Unfortunately it sent him to Vietnamese language school. The character is
variously named Klein, Lang, John, Don, Haberman, etc. The ability to
speak the language is often times as alienating as opening -- and the
scenes of the vets afterward watching As the World Turns show that same
movement between alienation and insight continue. I think this book is
working notes for a novel that could be very good, if Christman goes
beyond the effective emotional tableau into a continous emotional space.
Thin Ice and Other Risks
by Gary Eller is the best of three. It contains nine stories written
(all but one) in first person, character sketches characterized by the
skillful handling of absences. The title story concerns an almost
adultery that never occurs between an unemployed man and an ice skater.
But even in his own thoughts, he never allows the words adultery or cheat
or even sex to surface -- the thin ice remains intact. In "Independence
Day" a story about a middle aged man's almost coming to terms with death
of a boyhood friend's recent death from AIDS, the narrator never can quite
say that his friend was gay. In "A Hundred Reasons" the one of the best
stories in the collection, even the symbol for the narrator change into
the world of freedom and possibilities isn't actually there: "He wished
he'd mounted a weather vane on that sturdy roof. he could see it now,
glinting in the light as it turned in the wind, pointing to all the
different directions in the world." The sparkling ice of the Upper Midwest
winter is here in these stories. Eller is in the process of finishing a
long novel set in Alaska.
The Peace Terrorist
is the type of book I hate to be confronted with as a reviewer. It
becomes difficult to separate my views on the political content of the
stories and the writerly craft in them -- particularly when they are
clearly drawn from life. Blurbs and biographical notes stressing Masters
involvement in beaucoup social change organizations, her imprisonment for
nonviolent protests, even the books dedication to family and change groups
make it very, very clear that the women protagonists in this book of
social change heroism are Masters herself (or at least her best friends).
The causes her characters fight for in these ten stories -- ranging from
world peace to Amerindian rights -- are all virtuous in my book. Those
women who have lead the charge against military contractors are heroic.
So I would like to see writing that really gets me inside the head of
these people. Instead I found Masters' characters cold and remote -- even
in the two first person vignettes that frame the collection. All of the
hard driven women in this book are very very alone. If they have or had
husbands, the husbands are dealt with in one sentence either with the word
divorce or supportive. If they have children the kids are described as
"babies' regardless of their age and seen as reasons to stop whatever
madness. The frame pieces enforce this isolation. In the first our
narrator -- on a work program from jail -- identifies with a street women
in the library, but discovers that the street women is murmuring racial
hatred and flees back to her station. In the last story the narrator is
lamenting that when a lesbian comrade at arms died she wasn't called into
the circle of friends to give comfort. Each of these tales does an OK job
of describing the individual who loves mankind and mother earth but can
not love and be loved by the specific manifestations of either -- a
portrayal of sainthood as a dysfunctional relationship -- but Masters'
work as a writer lies before her -- to portray service to the cause of
Love not just as the endless hard work it is -- but as a gateway to self
transformation as well.
I always keep the books I'm sent to review until the review appears, then
I decide their fate. Falling in Love at the End of the World
and The Peace Terrorist will become gifts to friends, who resemble the
main character in each. My greatest joy in such books is that they provide
mirror for persons I know, who like of all of us are trying to figure out
that ultimate mystery of the person in the mirror. Thin Ice and Other
Risks will go into my over packed bookshelves, because I will get a lot of
joy rereading it as I try to figure out the mystery of writing about what
isn't said at all.
REVIEWS OF _THE NAUGHTY YARD_, _PUCK#10_ and _The Gets of
Boombox Heaven_
Name: Don Webb
Author of book reviewed: Michael Hemmingson
Title: The Naughty Yard
Name of press: Permeable Press
Address of small press: 47 Noe St. #4./ SF, CA 94114-1017
Year of publication: 1994
Cloth and/or paper: Paper
Number of pages: 103
Price: Paper: $5.95 Cloth:
Biography: Don Webb recently completed a new book of short fiction
Ecaflow Revisited , as well as selling short stories to Rodger Zelazny's
Wheel of Fortune and Nancy Collins-Linhart's Forbidden Acts.
The Naughty Yard
is one of the first works from a writer of my generation to show genius.
I's also a damn good stroke book. It tells the story of Mike, who had
found an erotic paradise -- a naughty yard where one has to work very hard
at maintaining one's ecstasy as contrasted with the Garden of Eden where
one received happiness for free -- with anal sex goddess Beth, and then
lost it with her suicide, and after the long hurting of emptiness decides
to enter the yard again with a night of tender and hot sex with Kathy and
Cynthia. Each tells their erotic past, and all are informed by the
longing and beauty of dreams, desire, sleep, and sadness. As is the case
in the best eroticons all topics are covered from the deflowering of
virgins (male and female) to the most advanced perversions. The
narratives are (for the most part)presented as spoken stories, and the
language and rhythm of the speech reminds us of Hemmingson's growing
reputation as a poet (check him out in the Winter 1994 edition of Ghost
Dance ). The subjective and the antinomian are valorized here, and this
will be increasingly the voice of fiction of the turn of the century. My
wife, I and a close friend made the book into readers theater acting out
(in the interests of literary criticism you understand) some of the more
challenging parts. I would recomend that approach to any lucky enough to
buy this short novel, but in all cases I recomend this book which blazes
in brilliance and darkness to the glory of desire.
Name: Don Webb
Author of Magazine reviewed: Various
Editor of Magazine reviewed: Brian Clark
Translator of Magazine:
Title:
Puck : the Unofficial Journal of the Irrepressible
Name of press: Permeable Press
Address of small press: 47 Noe St., Studio 4/ SF,CA
94114-1017
Year of publication: 1994
Cloth and/or paper: Paper
Number of pages: 84
Price: Paper: $17.00/3 Cloth:
I got this for free as a reviewer, which is good because I
would have to buy it for three reasons: Hugh Fox, Michael
Hemmingson, and Freddie Baer. This issue {The pisberPuck
issue}. is decanted to the memories of Frank Zappa, Robert
Anton Wilson, and Papa John Creech. But wait you say --
Robert Anton Wilson isn't really dead that was just an
Internet hoax. Don't these people have any respect for the
Truth? They are interested in something much more important
-- ideas which once formed can't go away. They're not just
interested in their own; although the 26+ contributors are
some of the great idea crafters in the small (or any) press,
but are also interested in throwing the spotlight around on
other goodies -- as they put it "16 tons of reviews." In
addition to the above named talent my favorite entries were
an article on Generation X in Australia by McKenzie Wark
(with some interesting cross commentary on Japanese Gen X),
and Brian's review of the latest Mystic Fire videos. I can
get my local store to order a couple of "other" videos a
year, but it's hard to find out what's worthwhile -- good
stuff here! Permeable press also has a service, mail them
$5.00 and they'll send you a pound of small press goodies.
A nice node on the eternal network here . . .
Name: Don Webb
Author of book reviewed: Bob Zark
Editor of book reviewed:
Translator of book reviewed:
Title:
The Gates of Boombox Heaven
Name of press: Panic Button Press
Address of small press: POB 1905 * Stuyvesant Station/ NY,
NY 10009
Year of publication: 1994
Cloth and/or paper: Paper
Number of pages: 1
Price: Paper: $7.95 Cloth:
This is a book of 54 poems dedicated to 43 people,
containing 25 images by 8 artists. It has one flaw, which
is that the interior art, which ranges from good to poor, is
not matched with the names of the artists so you don't know
who drew what. It has one great strength, it has Bob Zark's
zany anger. From totally honest sincere, "Put Idealism Back
in Classrooms Please" to the wonderfully goofy "Millions of
Possums.' I've been trying to get people to read Bob Zark
since my days as reviewer for the much lamented
New
Pathways
. And I don't intend to stop. Here's a 9 line cento
created by randomly pulling 9 9th lines from 9 different
poems in the collection:
Welcome to the company,
Pesticides gasoline fast food stop n shop
over the bashed up dashboards of time,
do you find it
brought houses down?
As a hundred madmen clamored
golden flecks of mundalingo
ate through my clothes
uggah buggah damage