Topic: March 2005
Fans of magical realism's tales of uberhumanity might want to read this arch overview of Jonathan Lethem's work in The New York Review of Books. In "Welcome to New Dork," critic John Leonard exposes the differences between the world's literary supermen, past and present. From the commentary: "Superpowers are not what magic realism was about in Bulgakov, Kobo Abe, Salman Rushdie, or the Latin American flying carpets. That Michael Chabon and Paul Auster have gone graphic, that one Jonathan, Lethem, writes on and on about John Ford, while another Jonathan, Franzen, writes on and on about "Peanuts," even as Rick Moody confides to the Times Book Review that "comics are currently better at the sociology of the intimate gesture than literary fiction is," may just mean that the slick magazines with the scratch and sniff ads for vodka and opium are willing to pay a bundle for bombast about ephemera." Zoinks!
Magical realist poet Hermine Meinhard will
teach a poetry workshop Saturday, June 11 ? 18, 2005 on a working farm in the wine country of Tuscany as
part of "The Soul of a Poem in the Heart of Italy" workshop in Il Chiostro Villas. The workshop is
limited to 10-12 participants; for more information, contact Hermine Meinhard or visit the workshop website