THE DUTTON REVIEW, edited by Jerome Charyn, Hal Scharlatt and Robert Brown (E. P. Dutton, 1970)

The Dutton Review got off to a good start and didn't get to go anywhere else; this was the only issue. And while E. P. Dutton had a lot to be proud of on its lists, they clearly weren't too interested in their women writers; even Managing Editor Susan Stern apparently couldn't convince them to publish more than one writer, Norma Meacock, with a novel excerpt, who didn't carry the XY chromosome. 

Otherwise, it's a nice mix of poetry, short fiction (albeit as much excerpts from novels by William Gaddis and Stanley Elkin), Anthony Kerrigan writing on Borges to accompany the Borges story (translated by Borges and Norman Thomas di Giovanni, then in the midst of their project producing the best translations of Borges's work), Jack Newfield's critical survey of journalism, Rudolf Wurlitzer's "found poem" of sorts, and somewhat more traditional autobiography (also an excerpt) from Ray Mungo. There's a  brief editorial request that contributions be sent to a certain address, further suggesting  this was not meant to be purely a loss-leader and sampler of forthcoming work, but something along the lines of New American Review or New World Writing or New Directions (clearly missing the requirement that New be part of the title) or Works in Progress (the Book of the Month Club series that did somewhat more resemble, if not entirely, a sampler of recent offers). Probably a pity it didn't get to a second issue, nor a healthy run. 

From the FictionMags index, slightly corrected:

The Dutton Review [#1, 1970] ed. Jerome Charyn, Hal Scharlatt, Robert Brown and Susan Stern (E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., $1.95, 219pp, 5½" x 8¼")
Details supplied by Ned Brooks (and here revised by TM).
• 5 · JR or the Boy Inside · William Gaddis · na/ex J R (1975)
• 69 · The Guns of August · Raymond Mungo · bi/ex Famous Long Ago (1970)
• 99 · Three Poems · C. P. Cavafy · pm
• 103 · “Aaron” · Norma Meacock · ss/ex Thinking Girl (1969 UK. 1972 US)
• 111 · The Horse’s Ass · Barton Midwood · ss
• 121 · The First Twenty Objects in My Friend’s Apartment Plus My Own Monthly Expenses · Rudolph Wurlitzer · mi/pm
• 125 · Borges in Madrid · Anthony Kerrigan · nf
• 127 · Burnt Orange · John Hawkes · ss
• 151 · Journalism: Old, New, and Corporate · Jack Newfield · nf
• 167 · The Library · Richard Brautigan · ss/ex The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966 (1971)
• 183 · The Dick Gibson Show · Stanley Elkin · nt/ex The Dick Gibson Show (1971)
• 215 · The Intruder · Jorge Luis Borges; translated by Norman di Giovanni · ss

Please see Patti Abbott's blog for more of this week's books, and I'll be hosting next week.

FFB: NEW WORLDS OF FANTASY (1967) and its sequels (1970, 1971), edited by Terry Carr

The first New Worlds of Fantasy was one of the first anthologies Terry Carr would edit on his own, having already become the junior editorial partner for fantastic literature (including gothics and, soon, the significant Ace Specials line) at Ace Books and been paired with boss Donald Wollheim on the World's Best Science Fiction annual; looking back at them now, I'd failed to realize when reading them in the late '70s how much they attempted at least a reasonably focused sampling of the current fantasy fiction, particularly of the kind that has since been tagged as "urban" or contemporary fantasy, which seemed to be flourishing alongside the new emphasis on literary ambition in science fiction in the latter '60s and early '70s. Every volume features a story by Carr himself, which isn't simply egomania, as he was a brilliant and unprolific fantasist, and usually in this mode...his one collection of short fiction missed essentially only one major short work, "Virra," that would be collected in a special convention anthology a few years later. Jorge Luis Borges is in each volume, as are R. A. Lafferty and Avram Davidson (though Davidson is not represented, I'd suggest, by the best possible selections, even stressing their contemporary status), and there's no one in the books who is clearly, utterly out of place, and several you'd be hard-pressed to find too many other places, at least in anthologies of fiction, such as the fannish writer Britt Schweitzer or chess humorist Victor Contoski...I've yet to seek out anything else by Alfred Gillespie, and I suspect that Carr read the Leonid Andreyev in its then-recent Magazine of Horror reprint...happily, there's been at least a little more translated from him. I think Carr might've been the first to reprint Peter Beagle in a fantasy-tagged context, to the benefit of all. And the second volume particularly featured new fiction...even if it's very strange that it took until the third volume for Carr to collect a Fritz Leiber story.

A fine trio of books, and indicative of how Carr would continue his valuable, too short career as an editor, and his too sparse career as a writer of fiction.


from the Contento indices:
New Worlds of Fantasy ed. Terry Carr (Ace A-12, 1967, 75¢, 253pp, pb); In England as Step Outside Your Mind (Dobson 1969).

8 · Introduction · Terry Carr · in
11 · Divine Madness · Roger Zelazny · ss Magazine of Horror Sum ’66
18 · Break the Door of Hell [Traveler in Black] · John Brunner · nv Impulse Apr ’66
52 · The Immortal · Jorge Luís Borges · ss Labyrinths, New Directions, 1962
66 · Narrow Valley · R. A. Lafferty · ss F&SF Sep ’66
80 · Comet Wine · Ray Russell · nv Playboy Mar ’67
97 · The Other · Katherine MacLean · ss New Worlds Jul ’66
101 · A Red Heart and Blue Roses · Mildred Clingerman · ss A Cupful of Space, Ballantine, 1961
118 · Stanley Toothbrush [as by Carl Brandon] · Terry Carr · ss F&SF Jul ’62
133 · The Squirrel Cage · Thomas M. Disch · ss New Worlds Oct ’66
147 · Come Lady Death · Peter S. Beagle · ss Atlantic Monthly Sep ’63
164 · Nackles [as by Curt Clark] · Donald Westlake· ss F&SF Jan ’64
172 · The Lost Leonardo · J. G. Ballard · ss F&SF Mar ’64
190 · Timothy [Anita] · Keith Roberts · ss sf Impulse Sep ’66
203 · Basilisk · Avram Davidson · nv *
228 · The Evil Eye · Alfred Gillespie · nv The Saturday Evening Post Jan 15 ’66

New Worlds of Fantasy No. 2 ed. Terry Carr (Ace 57271, 1970, 75¢, 254pp, pb)

9 · Introduction · Terry Carr · in
13 · The Petrified World · Robert Sheckley · ss If Feb ’68
23 · The Scarlet Lady [as by Alistair Bevan] · Keith Roberts · nv Impulse Aug ’66
63 · They Loved Me in Utica · Avram Davidson · ss *
67 · The Library of Babel [1941] · Jorge Luís Borges · ss Ficciones, Weidenfeld Nicolson, 1962
76 · The Ship of Disaster · Barrington J. Bayley · ss New Worlds Jun ’65
93 · Window Dressing · Joanna Russ · ss *
100 · By the Falls · Harry Harrison · ss If Jan ’70
108 · The Night of the Nickel Beer · Kris Neville · ss Escapade Dec ’67
118 · A Quiet Kind of Madness · David Redd · nv F&SF May ’68
148 · A Museum Piece · Roger Zelazny · ss Fantastic Jun ’63
158 · The Old Man of the Mountains · Terry Carr · ss F&SF Apr ’63
168 · En Passant · Britt Schweitzer · ss Habakkuk Dec ’60
175 · Backward, Turn Backward · Wilmar H. Shiras · nv *
196 · His Own Kind · Thomas M. Disch · ss *
206 · Perchance to Dream · Katherine MacLean · vi *
209 · Lazarus · Leonid Andreyev · ss, 1906; Weird Tales Mar ’27
229 · The Ugly Sea · R. A. Lafferty · ss The Literary Review Fll ’60
243 · The Movie People · Robert Bloch · ss F&SF Oct ’69

New Worlds of Fantasy No. 3 ed. Terry Carr (Ace 57272, 1971, 75¢, 253pp, pb)

9 · Introduction · Terry Carr · in
11 · Farrell and Lila the Werewolf [Sam Farrell] · Peter S. Beagle · nv guabi #1 ’69
39 · Adam Had Three Brothers · R. A. Lafferty · ss New Mexico Quarterly Review Fll ’60
53 · Big Sam · Avram Davidson · ss Alchemy & Academe, ed. Anne McCaffrey, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970
61 · Longtooth · Edgar Pangborn · nv F&SF Jan ’70
107 · The Inner Circles · Fritz Leiber · ss F&SF Oct ’67
125 · Von Goom’s Gambit · Victor Contoski · ss Chess Review Apr ’66; F&SF Dec ’66
133 · Through a Glass—Darkly · Zenna Henderson · nv F&SF Oct ’70
165 · The Stainless Steel Leech [as by Harrison Denmark] · Roger Zelazny · ss Amazing Apr ’63
173 · Sleeping Beauty · Terry Carr · ss F&SF May ’67
187 · The Plot Is the Thing · Robert Bloch · ss F&SF Jul ’66
197 · Funes the Memorious [1941] · Jorge Luís Borges · ss Ficciones, Weidenfeld Nicolson, 1962
207 · Say Goodbye to the Wind [Vermillion Sands] · J. G. Ballard · ss Fantastic Aug ’70
227 · A Message from Charity · William M. Lee · ss F&SF Nov ’67

For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog (nee Nase, though once that would've been Neis in some circumstances...see the accompanying plate of plate)

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Jorge Luis Borges, THE BOOK OF SAND; Italo Calvino, THE CASTLE OF CROSSED DESTINIES

The Book of Sand, as translated by Borges himself and Norman Thomas di Giovanni, was published in English by Dutton in 1977 and proved to be the last collection of fiction Borges was to assemble during his life...it was also the first collection of his I was to read, and I was hooked for life.

Contents:
The Other (El Otro)
Ulrikke (Ulrica)
The Congress (El Congreso)
"There Are More Things" ("There Are More Things")
The Sect of the Thirty (La Secta de los Treinta)
The Night of the Gifts (La noche de los dones)
The Mirror and the Mask (El espejo y la máscara)
Undr (Undr)
Utopia of a Tired Man (Utopía de un hombre que está cansado)
The Bribe (El soborno)
Avelino Arredondo (Avelino Arredondo)
The Disk (El disco)
The Book of Sand (El libro de arena)

Almost all of these stories were written after Borges's blindness had progressed to the point that he could no longer read for himself, and that perhaps contributed to the emphasis on memory in most of these, and perhaps some of the vivid imagery (not that that these elements were absent from the work of the younger Borges). "'There Are More Things'" was his slightly sardonic tribute to Lovecraft, thus nudging Borges into the elite class of Lovecraftians, however briefly (though their concerns with existential horror were not dissimilar, their approaches to the subject could hardly be more unalike: Borges is cool and offhanded where Lovecraft tends toward the perfervid). "The Book of Sand" itself is a masterful reapproach to the same concerns as drove "The Library of Babel," but more compactly...rather than an infinite library, the newer fiction offers an infinite book, or at least a book with an apparently infinite number of pages, and likewise containing all the possible combinations of characters. "The Night of the Gifts" was one of Borges's too-infrequent gaucho stories, Argentine westerns; "The Disk" another charming, if slight, peak at the same sort of fantastic visual device that was the McGuffin of "The Aleph"; "The Other" one of several encounters (like "Borges and Me" and "The Other Death") by twinned personas of Borges himself. "Utopia of a Tired Man" is a fine science-fictional encounter; "The Congress" a fine paranoid conspiracy tale...these are all pretty much examples of past mastery at play and work. It's a continuing shame that this edition is pointedly out of print because of the hassle between di Giovanni and the Borges estate.

I have less to say about the charming The Castle of Crossed Destinies, the 1977 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich edition translated by William Weaver, other than it was the first Calvino book I took on, and it might be the most Borgesian of his I've read so far (it was the also the only one I've attempted, with very modest progress, in the original Italian). A series of interlinked vignettes driven by tarot cards Calvino was fascinated by (a fascination shared, of course, by many other fantasy writers, including such students of tarot as Rachel Pollack and K. A. Laity), Calvino has always struck me as someone who was trying to bring the experience of the spoken tale to the page in a more immediate way than most writers, certainly than those who use frames such as having a tale told within their stories (contrast Borges, who was more interested in playing with the forms of literary genre itself, or Fritz Leiber, whose work I was reading as quickly as I could find it at the time I first read these books, who constantly threatens to, when he doesn't actually do so, break into actual playwriting in his prose fiction). At least this one's in print!

For more Friday books, please see Patti Abbott's blog