Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me
"Marías is not only doing a Henry James,
he's also spinning a traditional Shaggy Dog story,
one that goes on and on, much to the irritation
of not a few of the literary low-lifes
who go about calling themselves critics."Great Reviews of the Past
In Sam We Trust
"The great American dream.
Destroy your competition, and you become
super-rich. Keep your employees underpaid.
Get your merchandise made overseas,
in places like Bangladesh, where boys
and girls, some as young as nine years old,
become your workforce."BRIEF REVIEWS
The Wildlife of Madagascar,
Healing Your Past to Free Your Soul, and
The Decorative Arts of the Prairie School
ARTICLES
Terrorist Hits Mexicana Airlines
"Her eyes were bugging out;
she yelled, for all to hear:
I'm an old lady. I've lost my ticket.
Why don't you let me on the plane.
Why must you do this to me?"
The $12,000 Baby
"When you get to the point
where you can't or don't want to work anymore,
with eight or ten kids there will be at least
a couple around to care for you, feed you,
clean you up --- as you once did for them.
Social Security with a heart."READINGS
My First Sexual Experience --- 1920
"In a few minutes I would be
sitting down to lunch with my mother and Alessandro.
What if they suspected, what if they guessed?
How would I be able not to give something away?
Now I felt fear as well as guilt."
My First Driving Lesson --- 1920
"The three of them were
standing about laughing to split their sides.
She's a clown, they cried, un cloon.
That's how the French pronounce it."
POETRY
A Purchase of Porcelain
"Because the king
decrees that every Jew
must buy his wedding-right
in unsold porcelain
from the royal china works.
he stands, an amorous Jew,
gazing at luminous
suns and moons arrayed
on cloths of velvet blue..."Great Poems of the Past
The Chocolate Soldier
"Lymphoma in the afternoon,
Salmonella at night.
And for our last winter together:
Candidiadis, Kaposi's, and...ah...
My brainless love...progressive dementia.
The uniform vocabulary of our dying
Was quite lovely, wasn't it love?"
LETTERS
Migraine Headache,
Public Relations and
Bin Laden
A PITHY SAMPLE
Of our most notorious reviews
as collected in the hard-copy
"FOLIO"
TABLE OF CONTENTS
All books reviewed in RALPH
since 1994
arranged chronologically.SUBSCRIBE
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History
RALPH didn't spring full-blown from the brows of the gods:
We've been around (in different guises) for over twenty-five years.
The Fessenden Fund
Describing the good works of RALPH's official godparentLolita Lark, Editor-In-Chief
Post Office Box 16719
San Diego CA 92176
poo@cts.com
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