The Reading Room/4 [Paperback]

Barbara Probst Solomon (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 30, 2002

THE READING ROOM/4, a literary journal in book form features fiction, essays, poetry art. In this special International issue there is fiction from Europe, Cuba, Kenya and new American voices. Scientist Gerald Holton on terrorism, Joseph Roth, Barbara Probst Solomon on Marcel Duchamp's secret obsessions, new art by Larry Rivers, a section of Juan Goytisolo's new novel on Bosnia.

Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: Great Marsh Press (June 30, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1928863094
• ISBN-13: 978-1928863090
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,086,270 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Of Borders and Rivers (Larry Rivers, that is), October 7, 2002

By 

C. Yoder (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Reading Room/4 (Paperback)

It's always timely to have an international issue, but especially during a time of war, when borders are tightened, and focal points are narrowed. Literature tends to be able to leap over the checkpoints, and the stories in Reading Room/4 perform these acrobatics. The most striking piece that makes the leap for me is "Awakening," by Kenyan writer Julie Obaso. The story is centered on a child's initiation into brutality. The story's concern is the child's reaction to having to wring the neck of his pet, Old Rooster, for dinner. What is of interest is how the boy denies himself as a way of coping with the violence, and how he sees this denial, at different levels, in those around him.

A new translation of Joseph Roth's story, "Strawberries" opens the journal. Roth describes the people in a rural, poor, European town who survive on "miracles" and the generosity of a rich count. One character complains -- after selling the last bit of "lucky" rope from a man who hung himself -- "Life is like a prison, and we have to wait for God to let us out." Among other things, it's a story about getting by on bits of luck and scraps of work - definitely worth the read.

It's notable that the cover of this issue is a Larry Rivers portrait of Roth. The artist died in September of this year, around the time the journal was being distributed. His portrait of Roth would have been one of his last works. Serendipitously, his work is part of the editor's lusty essay on Marcel Duchamp and the conceptual artists' struggle with "the pesky body thing." In this essay, Barbara Probst Solomon probes the influence of Duchamp's 5-year affair with Maria Martins on his ideas about art's remove and on his long secrecy surrounding his work, "Etant Donnes" and "Woman with Open [word]." Rivers' work is brought in as a challenge to Duchamp's restrained gaze.

As usual in The Reading Room, there's an exciting blend of emerging and established voices. South African writer Anthony Schneider is one of the newer ones whose story, "An Uninhabited Place" is written in haunting and seductive prose about a different kind of desire than the one Duchamp strugged with. The author links a "dry and disconsolate" land to a struggle with infertility, in a beautiful rendering of a thing hoped for but unattained. I find myself linking this story to the drought we've been having in the east, and the infertility of the economy and the White house. But that's what's on my mind as I read it. Each reader will bring a new association.

These stories and the others are good for reading by a fire, or at least some incense. Or if no incense, than crack the book to Donald Maggin's "Gray Smoke of Incense" and imagine!