R A L P H The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities Number 113 Late Mid-Late Spring 2004 |
RALPH'S ALL-TIME HITS
The Top Ten
The Second Best
REVIEWS
Great Reviews of the Past
BRIEF REVIEWS
LETTERS FICTION
READINGS
Banker to the Seal-Hunters
POETRY THE OFFICIAL RALPH
GENERAL INDEX
A PITHY SAMPLE
SUBSCRIBE
Introduction
In honor of
RALPH's upcoming
tenth anniversary,
we present an album of
photographs of our editors
and other behind-the-scene
operatives.
The most-visited reviews,
articles, readings, letters, and poems
from RALPH's last ten years ---
listed in order of popularity.
Twenty more of the
most-visited reviews, articles,
readings, letters, and poems.
Reds:
McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America
"His thesis is that there was
a real and present threat of
Communism in the film industry
and that the work of HUAC to uproot them was
an honorable effort, but the author's attacks
on those who used the Constitution for protection
against self-incrimination sounds ominously like
McCarthy's Fifth Amendment Communists."Salamina
"A good travel writer must
make himself so interesting or
funny or strange that you
demand to be in on it,
enjoying the hell out of it,
the good and the bad of it,
not wanting it to end."
The Condor and the Cows
"Traveling for them meant going to
one of those American Embassy parties
where people stand around drinking Scotch,
complaining about the locals' laziness,
their filthy toilets
and dirty houses."
Body of Knowledge
"But there is one botheration:
the author, and the way
he puts his words together.
He has all the credentials.
He's a journalist. He was
a runner-up for the Pulitzer in 1998.
But his writing style ---
how can we say this gently ---
his writing style is all grody."
V. S. Naipaul,
Before, During, After, and
Progressive Christianity and the Great War
Art of the Pacific Northwest,
Tuke Lovers at Rutgers University
The Blood
Part I
"The nurse is arranging
a garden of vials and needles and
syringes in another room.
I can hear their clink like coins.
I imagine the pussy yellows and
thick reds and chemical blues.
I wonder what it smells like
in there. I think I can
smell the blues."
Part II
"Here there is no color,
only shades of shadows.
My eyes aren't open yet.
I don't know that I have eyes
or dilating pupils yet.
Here everything is the raw and
the uncooked, everything is possible
and undone."
Eating Raw Whale
"And although the scene
was one of carnage
in which everyone got
thoroughly besmeared with blood,
I must at once dispel the thought
that white-whale hide,
either raw or cooked,
is anything less
than one of the most palatable delicacies
of the world."
"I wouldn't like to be
the first in Greenland to suggest
that people pay you back more
than they have borrowed.
In fact I was so grateful
when they paid me back at all
that I'd pay them interest in cigars and beer."
O Lynx, my love, my lovely lynx
"O Lynx, my love, my lovely lynx,
Keep watch over my wine pot,
Guard close my mountain still
Till the god come into this whiskey.
Three nights amid lynxes
"We are here waiting the sun-rise
and the next sunrise
for three nights amid lynxes. For three nights
of the oak-wood
and the vines are thick in their branches
no vine lacking flower,
no lynx lacking a flower rope."
Paradox-of-the-Month
A complete list of all books reviewed in RALPH,
arranged by title, including author, subject, and publisher,
plus a listing of all readings, articles and poems
that have appeared since 1994.
of our most notorious reviews
as collected in the hard-copy
"FOLIO"
Help perpetuate honest, noisy, pesky book reviews.
With your $25 subscription, you get
a free copy of one or more of the titles from
Mho & Mho Works
Submitting Books The best way to get books to RALPH for review. Submitting Reviews Suggestions for would-be reviewers --- and payment schedule. History RALPH didn't spring full-blown from the brows of the gods: We've been around (in different guises) for over thirty years. The Fessenden Fund Describing the good works of RALPH's official godparent |
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