Daniel Menaker, the now retired longtime Executive Editor-in-Chief at Random House opines on the roulette-like nature of publishing: Redactor Agonistes

I'm in the middle of reading Menaker's damn good novel The Treatment (1998), so I was googling Menaker. Some of the best writing in recent years comes from publishers. I've been waiting for four years to see a new novel from Joseph Kanon, having recommended his Alibi to anyone who will listen. Those who took me up on it liked it. Menaker's The Treament has those Yates-like qualities I've been searching for lately. I sure hope Menaker is working on another one. Menaker's novel contains the most gutsy, straightforward, unsentimental, useful presentation of contemporary psychoanalysis I have ever read by a non-analyst. And that's by far not the only fine thing about it.

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Another notable read: Will Clark's 2006 book The Worthy. A murdered frat pledge's ghost contemplates revenge on his murderer. Will Clarke's hilarious Lord Vishnu's Love Handles was published in 2005.

Paul Carson's 2005 book Betrayal is a fairly exciting, politically savvy revenge saga concerning the life of a prison doctor in Ireland.

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Stop Smiling: online record reviews.

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Recently received: De Witt Henry's memoir Safe Suicide published by the Los Angeles Red Hen press in 2008.

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John Latta on Ray DiPalma's The Ancient Use of Stone
Isola di Rifuiti

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Nico Vassilakis Notes on Staring

Word for /Word # 15

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Mira Schor (editor of " The Extreme of the Middle: The Journals of Jack Tworkov) interview and performance on

Art on Air

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Contradicta


Caring and loving are the food, achievement and success are the condiments; hard to believe for many, whose lives are therefore tragic.


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In the USA, where aging is feared and hated, skepticism about the traditional goals of old age flourishes: wisdom, prudence, compassion, etc