Small Press Bk Rev-Fall '01/Part 3
HenryBerry
The Public Face of Modernism - Little Magazines, Audiences, and Reception,
1905-1920 by Mark S. Morrison. U. of Wisconsin Press, 2537 Daniels St.,
Madison, WI 53718-6772. 2001. 279+xiv pp. $50.00 hardcover (0-299-16920-0).
$19.95 trade paper (0-299-16924-3).
(periodicals; modernism; literary studies)
The role of the "little magazines" from the 1890s to the 1920s in bridging the
gulf between modernists--e. g., the avante-garde--and mass culture. The little
magazines accomplished this not only from the involvement of major modernist
authors such as Joyce, Eliot, and Shaw with them, but also with the emerging
techniques of mass advertising. A few of the little magazines dealt with are
the English Review, Freewoman, the Egoist, the Little Review, and one named the
Masses. The little magazines were instrumental in shaping the general public's
familiarity with modernist literature and more broadly, the modernist
aesthetics the literature represented. An extensive and illuminating work of
social critique in a subject area which has been covered only sporadically in
the study of modernism.
Linguistics of American Sign Language - An Introduction, Third Edition by
Clayton Valli and Ceil Lucas. Clerc Books/Gallaudet University Press,
Washington, D. C. 2000. 493+xvi pp. $60.00 hardcover; 7" x 10" (1-56368-097-1).
illustrations, charts, tables, chapter notes, chapter bibliographies, index.
(sign language)
A voluminous text on sign language. With chapters on phonology, morphology,
syntax, and semantics, this could be a text on any spoken language. The authors
have both been professors at Gallaudet. Many photographs, illustrations, and
diagrams complement the basic text. MIxed in with Valli and Lucas's basic text
in appropriate spots are more than 20 writings from other authors on related
topics. With the thorough, authoritative text by the two Gallaudet professors
plus the many writings on American sign language by other authorities, this is
a primary, distinctive work on this subject.
Heresy and the Ideal - On Contemporary Poetry by David Baker. U. of Arkansas
Press, 201 Ozark, Fayetteville, AR 72701. 2000. 291+xiv pp. $$40.00 hardcover
(1-55728-602-7). $20.00 trade paper (1-55728-603-5). index.
(collected essays; poetry; criticism)
Baker's 16 essays and essay-reviews were published over the 1990s in the Kenyon
Review, the Southern Review, Poetry, and other leading literary periodicals.
From the perspective of Romantic poetics, Baker notes and discusses the
tensions between reason and passion and literary and social concerns in the
poetry of A. R. Ammons, Louis MacNiece, Seamus Heaney, Jorie Graham, and other
contemporary poets, including less well-known ones. As with all good literary
criticism, poetry criticism especially, Baker's essays deal with the
inter-related topics of style and technique, personality, meaning, and art.
I Remember by Joe Brainard. Granary Books, 307 Seventh Ave. - Suite 1401, New
York, NY 10001. 2001. 180 pp. $12.00; 4" x 6" (1-887123-48-2)
(memoir; first-person)
In this eccentric, but appealing work, Brainard writes about 1,000 short
passages all beginning with the phrase "I Remember." The passages are both
insightful about the common experiences of persons in childhood and adolescence
and fetching for their simple charm and frequent humor. "I remember getting rid
of everything I owned on two occasions"; "I remember making tents for the front
porch on rainy days"; "I remember not finding pumpkin pie not very visually
appealing"; "I remember blonde women who get so much sun you can't see them"
Brainard was a gay artist who attracted a following.
A History of American Literary Journalism - The Emergence of a Modern Narrative
Form by John C. Hartsock. U. of Massachusetts Press, Box 429, Amherst. MA
01004. 2001. 294+xiv pp. $50.00 hardcover (1-55849-251-8) $17.95 trade paper
(1-55849-252-6). footnotes, appendix, bibliography, index.
(journalism; history and critique)
Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" and Joan Didion's "Slouching Toward
Bethlehem" were noted works of nonfiction in a style of journalism going back
to the decades after the Civil War. Stephen Crane, Lafcadio Hearn, and Ambrose
Bierce were early practitioners of this journalism. It was meant to gives
American citizens a perspective on events, people, and issues that could help
them evaluate these. The muckraking of the early 1900s was a version of the
literary journalism and also are the exposes of recent decades. Despite the
longevity of the style and the influence of a number of works in its field,
literary journalism has always been regarded as something of a hybrid,
secondary type of writing. Hartsock ends his book on the note that the style
should be studied systematically to develop an appreciation of it as well as
writers more skilled in it as it was originally intended.
Exit Into Eternity - Tales of the Bizarre and Supernatural by C. M. Fenham,
with an Introduction by Muriel E. Eddy. Fenham Publishing, PO Box 767,
Narragansett, RI. 2000; reprint edition. 194+vii pp. $14.95 trade paper
(0-9701699-0-6).
(collected stories; gothic; supernatural)
Eddy wrote macabre and supernatural tales in the style of the famous H. P.
Lovecraft, whom Eddy was friends with in Providence, R. I., in the mid-1900s.
Eddy himself gained some reputation for his short stories printed in the
popular pulp mags Weird Tales, Munsey's Magazine, and Snappy Stories. "Exit
into Eternity" is a collection of five of Eddy's stories with an Introduction
by his wife. Eddy died in 1967.
This Waiting for Love - Helene Johnson, Poet of the Harlem Renaissance edited
with an Introduction by Verner D. Mitchell. U. of Massachusetts Press, Box 429,
Amherst, MA 01004. 2000. 134+xii pp. $24.95 hardcover (1-55849-256-9).
photographs, bibliography, chronology, index.
(criticism; Black studies; Harlem Renaissance)
The black woman poet Helene Johnson did not gain much attention when she
wrote during the years of the Harlem Renaissance in the mid 1900s. But she
attracted the attention of the noted poets James Weldon Johnson and Robert
Frost, who selected three of her poems for prizes in a 1926 poetry competition.
Johnson was also connected to contemporary literature and the Harlem
Renaissance by being the cousin of the novelist Dorothy West and friend of Zora
Neale Hurston. With its introductory essay, selection of poems, chronology, and
a selected letters, this slim volume provides a rounded introduction to this
overlooked poet. Johnson's poems move away from the traditional formalities and
forms to deal with the sensual and other feelings of women and political
matters.
Narrow Road to the Deep North - A Journey to the Interior of Alaska by
Katherine McNamara. Mercury House, PO Box 192850, San Francisco, CA 94119-2850.
2001. 300 pp. $15.95 trade paper (1-56279-122-2). notes.
(first-person narrative)
This is McNamara's account about her experience in Alaska in the 1970s when the
traditional Anglo and Native American cultures were changing due to the
development of oil. McNamara focuses especially on the Athabaskan Eskimo man
named Dena'ina whose memories, perspectives, and disturbances reflect the
changes breaking the link to nature that was the basis of the traditional
Alaskan culture for all ethnic groups. The author gives a wide-ranging view of
the changes from her position as partly an outsider and partly an insider. She
was a teacher traveling among several schools in the Alaskan interior during
the time period of the book. Currently, she is a writer of poems and essays.
Nature's Open Secret - Introductions to Goethe's Scientific Writings by Rudolf
Steiner, with an Essay on Participatory Science by John Barnes. Anthroposophic
Press, PO Box 799, Great Barrington, MA 01230. 2000. 305+xii pp. $35.00
hardcover (0-88010-393-0). illustrations, footnotes, bibliography.
(selected writings of Goethe; science; nature; literary critique)
Steiner's illuminating commentaries on nature writings of Goethe's are not
a narrow exegesis, but rather an exposure of Steiner's own ideas about the
relationship between human beings and nature. Steiner found in Goethe a
sympathetic soul whose nature writings served partly as the source for his own
ideas as well as a reference for clarification and expansion of them. Readers
will find this collection of Steiner's writings perceptive and stimulating.
With the addition of John Barnes "Essay on Participatory Science," the volume
also serves as an overview of central issues and positions regarding the
interconnection of nature and human life.
Illuminating Letters - Typography and Literary Interpretation edited by Peter
C. Gutjahr and Megan L. Benton. U. of Massachusetts Press, Box 429, Amherst, MA
01004. 2001. 206 pp. $34.95 hardcover (1-55849-288-7). illustrations,
footnotes, index.
(literary critique; book art)
Seven eclectic essays disclose effects of typography on reading,
interpretation, and public acceptance and understanding of various major texts
in Western literature and styles of typography in different eras. Among the
texts are the King James Bible, the medieval poem "Piers Ploughman," and the
eighteenth-century novels of Samuel Richardson. Some of the essays--such as
Megan Benton's on "Typography and Gender: Remasculating the Modern
Book"--expand one's understanding of the effects and implications of typography
on individual readers as well as on the general perception of literature. A
specialized study in the topical field of book history of interest to any
student of this subject.
Nature
Desert Ecology - An Introduction to Life in the Arid Southwest by John Sowell.
U. of Utah Press, 1795 E. South Campus Dr. - #101, Salt Lake City, UT
84112-9402. 2001. 193+xii pp. $17.95 trade paper (0-87480-678-X). maps,
photographs, illustrations, bibliography, index.
(ecology; U. S. southwest)
Sowell is not just interested in surveying the animal and plant life of
the deserts of the Southwest, but in going into detail on how the various
animals and plants have adapted to the forbidding desert climate. This approach
makes his nature work especially interesting and informative for readers.
Sowell goes so far as to point out particular adaptive qualities for the
microclimates of the deserts. He does all of this in a style for the average
reader, who will find the material of the book fascinating, like watching a
well-done, instructive nature documentary.
New Age/Spirituality
Stepping Into the Aquarian Age - A Guidebook for the New Evolutionary Cycle by
Nancy Privett. Old Lion Publishing, 4 Montauk Highway, Westhampton, NY 11977.
2001. 246+vi pp. $18.95 trade paper; 7" x 10" (0-9702716-1-1)
(spirituality; self-help)
Privett, the founder and director of the Center for New Consciousness on
Long Island, New York brings together a wide variety of subjects and techniques
concerning enhancing one's spirituality. Correspondences, gender, energy,
symbolism, subconsciousness, and creativity are all treated. The author
integrates them all into a multi-faceted concept of spirituality and
inter-related activities for cultivating it so that her book is a comprehensive
handbook on spirituality.
The Most Holy Trinosophia and the New Revelations of the Divine Feminine by
Robert A. Powell. Anthroposophic Press, PO Box 799, Great Barrington, MA 01230.
2001. 160 pp. $16.95 trade paper (0-88010-480-5).
(anthroposophy; feminine religiosity)
Powell sees the philosophical/religious figure of Sophia representing
Divine Wisdom in Platonic and neoPlatonic philosophy and spirituality as the
symbol for a trinity of feminine principles. Sophia is seen by Powell as the
trinity of Mother, Daughter, and Holy Spirit. This trinity of spiritual
principles is coming into ascendancy in history and universal culture. The
modern-day Russian mystic Daniel Andreev's essay "The Divine Feminine" is
included in this book. Powell's visionary ideas grew out of his study of
Andreev and other Slavic spiritual thinkers. Sophia has been a more important
figure, or concept, in Orthodox Christianity than in the Christianity of the
West.
DMT - A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and
Mystical Experiences by Rick Strassman, M.D. Inner Traditions International.
One Park St., Rochester, VT 05767. 2001. 360+xvii pp. $16.95 trade paper
(0-89281-927-8). notes.
(mysticism; physiology)
Strassman takes a New Age approach by concentrating on the therapeutic
powers of the naturalistic psychedelic drug DMT and the mystical,
near-death-like, states it creates. A similar drug is made by the body's pineal
gland. The author's research on DMT at the University of New Mexico was
approved by the DEA. The investigation of the intriguing effects and uses of
DMT combine reports of its physical effects and accounts of experiences in
taking the drug by individuals participating in Strassman's studies.
Philosophy
Remembering Heraclitus by Richard Geldard. Lindisfarne Books, PO Box 799,
Great Barrington, MA 01230. 2001. 164+x pp. $16.95 trade paper (0-940262-98-3)
footnotes, appendix, glossary, bibliography.
(Greek philosophy)
Geldard has a doctorate in literature and classics from Stanford
University. This fourth book of his is an exegesis of the fragmentary writings
of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who lived in Ephesus in Asia Minor.
Heraclitus's remaining writings are dealt with according to their primary
topics--apophasis (simply, affirmation by negation, i. e., a way of approaching
truth), logos, physis, nomos, ethos, and telos. Geldard's exegesis of
Heraclitus is engaging for the serious student of philosophy.
Reference
The Undergraduate’s Companion to American Writers and their Web Sites by
James K. Bracken and Larry G. Hinman. Libraries Unlimited, PO Box 6633,
Englewood CO 80155-6633. 2000. 309+xiv pp. $30.00 trade paper (1-56308-859-2).
index.
(literature)
Besides references to Web sites, the entries on close to 300 living and
deceased American writers include references to major biographies and critical
works on the authors and to bibliographies of their works. Most of the writers
are novelists and poets with a smattering of ethnic and nonfiction writers.
New Virtual Field Trips by Gail Cooper and Garry Cooper. Libraries Unlimited,
PO Box 6633, Englewood, CO 80155-6633. 2001. 155+xvi pp. $27.50 trade paper;
7” x 10” (1-56308-887-8). index.
(Internet; Web sites)
One hundred new virtual filed trips are added to this revised edition of
the Cooper’s reference. The field trips included are in diverse subject areas
and areas of interest. History, geography, space, sports, nature, mathematics,
the arts, and famous people are among these. Descriptive annotations let the
reader know just what can be found at each of the Web sites offering a virtual
field trip.
Religion/Spirituality
The Hindu Temple - Deification of Eroticism by Alain Danielou. Inner
Traditions, One Park St., Rochester, VT 05767. 2001. 130 pp. $24.95 trade
paper; 8" x 10" (0-89281-854-9). color/b+w photographs, bibliography, index.
(sexuality; Hinduism; spirituality)
The statuary of Hindu temples depicts the tension between and union of
different cosmic forces as represented by sexuality more explicitly than any
other religion. Danielou takes the reader on a tour through a typical Hindu
temple explaining the art work and imagery in each part. An author of over 30
books on India from more than 20 years of study of its religion, art, and
culture, Danielou discusses the spiritual figures depicted, the symbolism of
the sexual imagery, and the broader Hindu spirituality reflected in the art
work.
Finding Space - Winnicott, God, and Psychic Reality by Ann Belford Ulanov.
Westminster John Knox Press, 100 Witherspoon St., Louisville, KY 40202-1396.
2001. 232+viii pp. no price given - hardcover (0-664-22269-2).
appendices,notes, index.
(psychology and religion)
Ulanov is a professor of psychiatry and religion at the Union Theological
Seminary in New York with a special interest in Jungian psychology. She
attempts to "show the great usefulness of depth psychology for grasping anew
the lived experience of reality--the origin and end that religious symbols and
activities seek to represent." The source and recurring reference for her ideas
is the British psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott, "representing the British
Independent tradition of Object relation theory of psychoanalysis." Ulanov sees
in Winnicott's virtual identification of playing and reality insights into the
nature of reality, self, God, and the relationship among these; which insights
she explores and uses as the stimulus for her own insights and ideas on the
topics.
Science
Permafrost - A Guide to Frozen Ground in Transition by Neil Davis. U. of Alaska
Press, PO Box 756240, Fairbanks, AK 99775-6240. 2001. 351+xvi pp. $35.95
hardcover (1-889963-19-4) color/b+w photographs, maps, illustrations, tables,
charts, glossary, bibliography, index.
(permafrost; geology; geography)
One often hears about permafrost in news reports and articles about the
near Arctic and Arctic regions of North America; lately in coverage of the
issue of drilling for oil in Alaska. Davis, an emeritus professor of geophysics
and author of science articles for the general reader, has written a thorough,
detailed work on permafrost. Its detail with numerous illustrations and
diagrams places it above the interest of the average reader; but these same
qualities make it a fundamental work on permafrost and the geology, geography,
climate, etc. of the northernmost regions of North America. Davis's
"Permafrost" notably fills in what has been largely a blank area in the study
of geology for both lay and professional readers with an interest in this
fascinating topic.
Self-Help/How-To
The One-Minute Philosopher - Quick Answers to Help You Banish Confusion and
Resolve Controversies and Explain Yourself Better to Others by Montague Brown.
Ph.D. Sophia Institute Press, Box 5284, Manchester, NH 03108; 800-888-9344.
2001. 207+xii pp. $19.95 hardcover (1-928832-25-3). index.
(self-help)
Brown pairs often opposing qualities or concepts for a clarification of
each. For example, admiration is paired with envy; conscience is paired with
feelings, dependency is paired with subjugation, reverence is paired with
superstition, pain is compared with evil; and so on for dozens of other
pairings. He defines each term and suggests how it figures into one's thinking
and behavior. His treatment of the qualities and concepts is focused on their
role in one's life and relationships. Brown's treatments are succinct and
relevant. This is an unusual self-help standing out from the legion of others
in this genre, nearly all of which are superficial by comparison and routine.
Brown has a doctorate in philosophy from Boston College.
Sports/Outdoor Activities
The Professional Golfers' Association Tour: A History by Mike Gabriel.
McFarland and Co., Box 611, Jefferson, NC 28640; 800-253-2187. 2001. 208 pp.
$38.50 trade paper (0-7864-0844-8). photographs, notes, index.
(professional golf)
A decade-by-decade history of the PGA from the 1920s to the 90s. Noting the
changes particular players brought to the game, Gabriel also treats its
changing economics and the impact of the media, especially TV.
The Expectant Gardener - A Wise and Fun Guide to the Adventure of Backyard
Growing by Simone Martel. Creative Arts Book Company, 833 Bancroft Way,
Berkeley, CA 94710. 2001. 194+viii pp. $13.95 trade paper (0-88739-281-4).
(gardening)
A likable, journal-like account of an amateur, but helplessly committed
gardener's involvement with gardening on all levels--physical, emotional,
spiritual. Martel treats the minor tribulations of what to plant to the lasting
satisfactions of full-bloomed plants.
Travel
The Spiritual Traveler - England, Scotland, Wales - The Guide to Sacred Sites
and Pilgrim Routes in Britain by Martin Palmer and Nigel Palmer. Hidden Spring,
997 Macarthur Blvd., Mahwah, NJ 07430. 2000. 315+xiv pp. $20.00 trade paper
(1-58768-002-5). color/b+w photographs, maps, resources, bibliography, indexes.
(travel guide; independent travel)
All sorts of spiritual sites are covered--ancient and contemporary, ruins
and existing buildings, nature sites and major cathedrals. Information on stays
at monasteries, abbeys, and spiritual centers throughout the United Kingdom is
provided.
Women's Studies
The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women - a portable memoir by Gail McMeekin.
Conari Press, 2550 Ninth St. - Suite 101, Berkeley, CA 94710; 800-685-9595.
2000. 237+xii pp. $16.95 trade paper; 7" x 10" (1-57324-141-5). bibliography,
index.
(interviews)
Interviews with 45 women who have risen to the top of diverse fields--including
writing, business, music, and design--focusing on the qualities that were most
important in their success. The 12 "secrets' of the title are divided into the
three main categories of Engaging your Creativity, Mastering Challenges as a
Creative Woman, and Actualizing Creative Results: The Power of Positive
Priorities; with chapters such as Honoring Your Inspirations, Committing to
Self-Focus, and Living in Abundance with Positive Priorities found within
these.
The Small Press Book Review is posted periodically on the newsgroup
alt.books.reviews. Books for general readers in all categories from small
presses, independent publishers, and university presses are reviewed. Review
copies can be sent to P. O. Box 176, Southport, CT 06490. Henry Berry is the
Review's editor/publisher.