The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities www.ralphmag.org
Number 226 Early Summer 2012 |
GORGEOUS
Over the years, we've nested our
on-line reviews, poems, articles and essays
in as elegant a space possible ---
with appropriate type-face, headers,
photos, and background color,
the perfect pot-au-feu for our readers (and ourselves).
Here are a dozen pages selected from the past ---
ones that our editors believe to be most fetching.
NEW REVIEWS From Here to Infinity
The Best American Magazine Writing 2011 Shockaholic Rez Life The Human Body Close-Up Cain
Great Reviews of the Past
LETTERS
War and Ideas
"This guy has
written thirteen books with
such scandalous ideas ...
and I am astounded that
the thought police haven't
descended on him,
harried him into
a lifetime exile."
"He reminds us that
'the great physicist Lord Rutherford
averred that nuclear energy
was moonshine,'
and that Thomas Watson,
founder of IBM, said:
'I think there is
a world market for maybe
five computers.'"
"Christopher Hitchens now
caught with cancer of the esophagus,
looking at it (and himself) with
his practiced, cynical eye,
managing to win our hearts ---
all the while not blotting out
his own feelings of despair."
"Michael Jackson with his
abused, banged-up, butchered,
burned, bleached, blasted, braised,
fried, filleted, fricasseed, frappeéd,
flayed, pasted, plasticised, potted, stripped,
scalloped, scrofulated, slashed
and scrupulously over-doctored face."
"The Bureau of Indian Affairs
believes that there are 310 reservations
in the United States. The BIA
doesn't have a sure count
which may say something
about the BIA, or it may
say something about
the nature of reservations."
"Do you know that
the fallopian tubes look like shaggy crappy
industrial motel carpets,
with little "goblet cells" that don't offer
a cup of mead but look like
little knobby burrs in the rug."
"In the process,
we find another Cain,
for Saramago has shaped him
into the new everyman,
looking at the world with a piercing clarity,
wondering how it can be
so mad and cruel."
Measuring The World
"How had he grown so old?
One didn't feel right any more,
one didn't see right any more,
and one thought at a snail's pace.
Aging wasn't a tragedy.
It was a farce."
Neither/Nor
MORE LETTERS EVEN MORE LETTERS
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Tattoos
You're a Donkey
Letters We Never Finished Reading
$10,000,000 in Iraq
ARTICLES
Recherche du Temps Perdu
"One day, early in
what I eventually noticed
was the 21st century,
the monster lying on my lab bench
twitched into life and
asked me for a cigarette.
Nobody smokes any more,
I told it, It's bad
for you."
READINGS
Is civil war going out of style?
I consider the general improvement
in the quality of
government
to be a key factor in
the decline of civil war.
But whatever the reason
for the decline,
it seems possible (though far from certain)
that civil war may be
going out of style.
Rambo's Vital Statistics
POETRY
Static Poems THE OFFICIAL RALPH
GENERAL INDEX
A PITHY SAMPLE
SUBSCRIBE
"Number of bad guys
killed by Rambo
with his
shirt on"
"Number of bad guys
killed by Rambo
with his
shirt off"
"Total number of bad guys
killed by Rambo
no
matter how attired"
Last Spring
"A drowned drayman was hoisted on to the slab.
Someone had jammed a lavender aster
between his teeth.
As I made the incision up from the chest
with a long knife
under the skin
to cut out tongue and gums..."
"Feel it --- but remember, millennia have felt it ---
the sea and the beasts and the mindless stars
wrestle it down today as ever ---"
Paradox-of-the-Month
All the back-issues of RALPH,
including titles of books under review,
along with author, subject, and publisher,
plus links to readings, articles, and poems
that have appeared on-line
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 Behind the Scenes The Faces of Those Who Make Up the Face of RALPH Copyright Notice The Reginald A. Fessenden Educational Fund, Inc. Hits 10,000 - 20,000 Daily Hits 200,000+ Original Page Views each Month |
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