Friday, April 5, 2019

FRIDAY'S "FORGOTTEN" BOOKS & MORE: the links to the reviews: 5 April 2019

This week's books and more, unfairly (or sometimes fairly) neglected, or simply those the reviewers below think you might find of some interest (or, infrequently, you should be warned away from); certainly, most weeks we have a few not at all forgotten titles...if I've missed your review or someone else's, please let me know in comments...a big week for Christie books...pushing the limit of "forgotten" but as with some of the other hugely popular, hugely prolific writers, each title aside from the most popular tends to be lost in the shuffle...how many John Creasey novels can most non-Creasey fans name?




FFM: FANTASTIC, September 1974, edited by Ted White; THE PARIS REVIEW, Autumn 1974, edited by George Plimpton; THE ONTARIO REVIEW, Autumn 1974, edited by Raymond J. Smith; THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, September 1974, edited by Edward Ferman

Late Summer 1974
Remarkable what an almost random look backward can turn up. 45 years ago. Not too long before I first began reading the magazines, and had already read some stories from them, or would first read them in that year and the next. I had my tenth birthday in August of 1974, and while I wasn't too fond of how life in general was going, I was more than happy enough about what I was finding in literature of various sorts. 

As I consider the four magazines here now, it occurs to me that all four were eclectic in their remit to a greater degree than most of their peers, and openly so...two in making clear that they mixed fantasy (of all sorts, including horror fiction) and science fiction (and were certainly willing to publish some notable fiction that wasn't fantasy or sf by any reasonable standard on occasion, or impressive stories which could be considered truly fantasticated only by squinting very hard...in the 1970s, Stuart Dybek's "Horror Movie" or Edward Wellen's short novel Goldbrick in F&SF, or Bill Pronzini and Barry Malzberg's "Another Burnt-Out Case" or Jack Dann's "Days of Stone" in Fantastic come to mind), the other two in being open to a greater degree to all sorts of fiction than many of their little-magazine peers (perhaps only the Boston-based and not the CCNY Fiction, Antaeus and TriQuarterly were as eclectic in the '70s), and proclaiming their internationality in their very titles, an English-language magazine initially out of Paris, an intentionally interculturally Anglophone North American magazine initially out of border city Windsor, Ontario. All four were founded in a certain spirit of defiance as well as openness, ambition beyond simply attempting to produce good magazines, and all found themselves a matter of a certain degree of controversy as a result (though in The Paris Review's case, much of that controversy was generated by the ultimate source of some of its funding, as the facts of CIA involvement went from quietly rumored to documented and revealed).  The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction began publishing in 1949, Fantastic in 1952, The Paris Review in 1953...and while this was the first issue of The Ontario Review, the geist of the magazine was not too different from that of its not too elderly peers.

--much more to come--see indices below:






























































































Fantastic Stories [v23 #6, September 1974] Ted White, editor (75¢, 132pp, digest, cover by Jeff Jones)
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction [v47 #3, #280, September 1974] edited by Edward Ferman (75¢, 164pp, digest, cover by Jeannine Guertin)

The Paris Review #59 Fall, 1974 $1.95

FICTION
Frederick Busch Widow Water
Lamar Herrin The Rio Loja Ring-Master
Mike Kempton Long Green
Ray Russell Rational Moments
David Shaber Progress Report

INTERVIEW
Gore Vidal The Art of Fiction No. 50

POETRY
Ameen Alwan Two Poems
Paul Anderson Falling
Maxine Chernoff Two Poems
W. K. Engel Two Poems
Albert Goldbarth Organization
Thomas Johnson Two Poems
Erica Jong Wrinkles
Erica Jong Becoming a Nun
Greg Kuzma Two Poems
Naomi Lazard Two Poems
David Lehman Greeting Where No Kindness Is
Molly McKaughan Ms. Delilah Hoffritz
Rush Rankin Poem
Vern Rutsala You
Ira Sadoff Five Poems
Aram Saroyan Two Poems
Louis Simpson Three Poems
Albert Stainton The Limestone Statue Boxing Factory
Charles Webb Two Poems

FEATURE
Peter Ardery In Memoriam

ART
William Wegman Portfolio of Drawings




The Ontario Review #1 Fall 1974 $2.50


INTERVIEW
A Conversation with Philip Roth by Joyce Carol Oates 9


POETRY
Stanley Cooperman, from The Jerusalem Poems 23 

Conrad Hilberry, Two for Alfred North Whitehead 28 
Miroslav Holub, Loneliness of the Minotaur 30 
Ernest Sandeen, T wo Poems 31 
J. Michael Yates, from Burn Tissue Cycle 47 
John Ditsky, Three Poems 50 
John R. Reed, Love Poem 53
Derk Wynand, Snowscapes 54 
Tom Wayman, Three Poems 67 
William Heyen, Two Poems 71 
Philip J. Klukoff, Deaf Mute 74 
Carl Dennis, Prowlers 75 
Robert Bringhurst, For Robert Grosseteste 76

FICTION
Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Lucca 33 

Bill Henderson, Pop 56

GRAPHICS
A. G. Smith, Landscapes from Coastal Carolina 41


ESSAY
Paul Marx, Harvey Swados 62


REVIEWS
John R. Reed, Instructive Alchemies 78 

Linda W. Wagner, Four Young Poets 89 
Gloria Whelan, The Poem as Myth 98 
Raymond Smith and Joyce Carol Oates, Briefly Noted 102 


Notes on Contributors 107 

Friday, March 29, 2019

FRIDAY'S "FORGOTTEN" BOOKS AND MORE: the links to the reviews: 29 March 2019

image courtesy Paul Fraser
This week's books and more, unfairly (or sometimes fairly) neglected, or simply those the reviewers below think you might find of some interest (or, infrequently, you should be warned away from); certainly, most weeks we have a few not at all forgotten titles...if I've missed your review or someone else's, please let me know in comments...we've lost at least two blogs, though happily not their bloggers, since last week, including Margot Kinberg's impressive work of a decade's standing...as she turns to other work.



John Boston: Amazing: Fact and Science Fiction Stories, September 1963, edited by Cele Goldsmith Lalli

Ben Boulden: Riders of the Storm by Ed Gorman

Brian Busby: Canada Reads and its books

Martin Edwards: Murder Plan Six by John Bingham; "You Were Never Really Here" by Jonathan Ames

Peter Enfantino: Warren Comics, September 1965-February 1966

Will Errickson: Joyride by "Stephen Crye" (Ronald Patrick)


José Ignacio Escribano: Artists in Crime by Ngaio Marsh

Curtis Evans: The Counterfeit Murders by Victor MacClure


Olman Feelyus: Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart

Paul Fraser: The Great SF Stories 4 (1942) edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg

John Grant: The Pursuit of Alice Thrift by Elinor Lipman; Final Theory by Mark Alpert

Aubrey Hamilton: So Pretty a Problem by Francis Duncan


Rich Horton: Elizabeth Hand's fiction; Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle; The Alternate Martians and Empress of Outer Space by A. Bertram Chandler; Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O'Connor; Crisis in 2140 and Uller Uprising by H. Beam Piper; the novels of Kim Stanley Robinson

Jerry House: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Winter-Spring 1950, edited by Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas


Kate Jackson: The Long Shadow by Celia Fremlin; Murder for Pleasure by Howard Haycraft; Crime in Good Company: Essays on Criminals and Crime Writing edited by Michael Gilbert; From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendellby Susan Rowland

Tracy K: A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny; A Killing in Quail Country by Jameson Cole

Colman Keane: The Second Girl by David Swinson

George Kelley: Challenge the Impossible: The Final Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne by Edward D. Hoch

Joe Kenney: Radio Waves by Jim Ladd

B. V. Lawson: Shroud of Canvas by Isobel Mary Lambot

Evan Lewis: Baseball Comics #1 by Will Eisner, 1949; "The Culture Corner" by Basil Wolverton, Whiz Comics, 1945-46

Steve Lewis: Fast Fade by Arthur Lyons; "The Perfect Crime" by C. S. Montayne, Black Mask, July 1920, edited by F. M. Osborne


Megan Mitchell: Beast in View by Margaret Millar

David Nemeth: re/acquaintance with some of the western fiction canon

John F. Norris: The Case of the Gold Coins by Anthony Wynne

Matt Paust: Paris in the Dark by Robert Olen Butler

James Reasoner: The Gladiator #1: Hill of the Dead by "Andrew Quiller" (Laurence James)

Richard Robinson: The Smoke at Dawn by Jeff Shaara

Gerard Saylor: Check, Please! Book 1: #Hockey by Ngozi Ukazu

Jack Seabrook: "Father and Son" by Thomas Burke, Vanity Fair, August 1934, edited by Frank Crowninshield

Steven H. Silver: Omni magazine in 1979, edited by Kathi Keeton

Victoria Silverwolf: Fantastic: Stories of Imagination, edited by Cele Goldsmith Lalli

Kerrie Smith: The Girl in the Photograph by Kate Riordan


Dan Stumpf: Canyon Passage by Ernest Haycox

Kevin Tipple: Warning Signs by Jan Christensen