The Mumpsimus

Bradford Morrow , editor of Conjunctions  and writer of The Diviner's Tale  and The Uninnocent , in an interview conducted by Edie Meidav at The Millions : I may be overly optimistic or utterly blind, but my view of contemporary American fiction is that it is as rich as ever. Some of the best work is being written in what until recently was considered, at least among the conventional literati, genre fiction. Horror, gothic, mystery, fantasy, fabulism. There are so many stunningly original and serious writers working these fields. I have to think that anybody reading this interview would agree. Just one example, though there are many, would be Elizabeth Hand . She composes sentences of ravishing beauty. She is capable of creating metaphor systems that are so dynamic and provocative. She can turn a fictive moment that seems deeply rooted in the everyday into something that, in fact, touches upon the sublime, the miraculous. Just read her novella Cleopatra Brimstone and tell m...

a guest review by Craig Laurance Gidney It was less like building a house than like colonizing an island, this freakish, lovely and marvelous atoll that rose from gray wasteland of St. Brendan’s High School like some extravagant Atlantis we’d willed into being. All of our previous alliances and identities were tossed aside—jock, freak, egghead, cheerlead and anonymous. (pg. 76) Back in the early 80s, when I was fourteen, I was in a production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest . While I did not get the part I wanted (Ariel), I remember the days leading up to the 3 day engagement as halcyon. The time spent preparing for the play is one of those perfect bubbles of euphoria that we all strive to recreate. That brief moment in time was key to crystallization of my identity. Joining a stage production is like entering a rarified world, where everyone agrees to create an alternate reality out of a spellbook -- a script. (And Shakespeare is surely the greatest of those enchant...