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Archive for the ‘Editorial’ Category

There’s a time to come …

Posted in Editorial on January 21, 2013 | 2 Comments »

And a time to go. After three years of GC, I’m passing the Olympic fire to my co-editor-in-chief T.M. De Vos. I, Lena Vanelslander for all clarity, enjoyed my time with you. Which is saying a lot after three whole years, alone or in company of some very capable people. I laughed, I cried and I will follow the mag as much as I can …  But for me, it’s time to go and it’s time T. comes. There probably  will be some changes, but I know T. is capable and professional, and hopefully she will keep the Olympic fire burning, as it never should be spent.

Morituri te salutant ;) .

Lena.

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Landscapes Uncovered: A review of Kristine Ong Muslim’s We Bury the Landscape by Colman O Criodain

Posted in Editorial, Nonfiction, Reviews on August 26, 2012 | 1 Comment »

Conceptually, this is one of the most unusual books I have ever read. We Bury the Landscape, by Kristine Ong Muslim, is a collection of 100 mini-stories based on works of visual art—paintings for the most part, but also drawings, and one photograph.

With the exception of William C. Tumley’s 1990 photograph of the environmental catastrophe that is the dried-up Aral Sea, all of the works of art are surrealist, at least in a loose sense. Dali, Ernst, and Magritte each have several works in the selection, as do more recent artists, such as Jacek Yerka and Jennifer Heffernan. (more…)

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Cup your ears and hear him: An attempt at a critical look at Mitchell S. Jackson’s Oversoul, by Jenny Catlin

Posted in Editorial, Fiction, Nonfiction, Reviews on August 14, 2012 | 1 Comment »

In the Simpsons episode where Homer becomes a food critic, his love of food inspires a rave review of every restaurant he critiques. I worry that I may be the Homer Simpson of literary criticism, writing one glowing review after another.  However, like Homer, I am determined to find a way to expose the bad in everything I read. Fortunately or unfortunately, it won’t begin with Mitchell Jackson’s Oversoul. There are few, if any, unenthusiastic words to be said about this unusual collection.

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The Fifth Хорошо: Interview with Rodica Mihailis

Posted in Editorial, Interviews, The New Хорошо, tagged , , , , , on July 17, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Memoirist, blogger, and soon-to-be clinical psychologist Rodica Mihailis has undergone many personal evolutions since her defection from communist Romania in 1981. Her recent memoir, The Gypsy Saw Two Lives (Strategic Book Publishing), itself evolved from her popular blog, chronicles the adaptations that have characterized her life on both sides of the Atlantic with humor and perspective—and a surprising amount of empathy even for the least sympathetic characters. In this fifth edition of “The New Xорошо,” Mihailis expounds upon faith, free will, and the funny side of being ousted from an ambulance in February; under separate cover, Colman O Criodain reviews The Gypsy Saw Two Lives.~T.M. De Vos

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The Fourth Хорошо: Interview with Yuriy Tarnawsky

Posted in Editorial, Interviews, The New Хорошо, tagged , on April 27, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Poet, translator, and fiction writer Yuriy Tarnawsky is a founding member of the New York Group, a friend to the surreal, and a fond misanthrope. His newest collection, Short Tails (JEF Books/Civil Coping Mechanisms), from a festival of grotesquerie and the existential struggle, is populated by characters who, variously, absorb Lenin’s verbal and gustatory tics, shed skin and limbs and ligaments until reduced to a single eyeball, or discover that a long-dead father is pulling them into the grave by the jowls. In this fourth and long-overdue installment of “The New Xорошо,” I learn to read less deterministically and Tarnawsky invokes the absurd, leaves us with a phonological riddle, and reminds us that we’re all going to die.~T.M. De Vos

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2011 in review

Posted in Editorial on January 2, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 29,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 11 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

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The Third Хорошо: Interview with Paul Rogov

Posted in Editorial, Interviews, The New Хорошо on October 17, 2011 | 4 Comments »

If you must know, Paul Rogov is from Minsk, Belarus, lives in southern California, and will blog for you about war, art, and trauma. But he’s not giving up his biography. Not that it’s important. With narratives populated by men with Saussurean scars, failed fathers, and gawky boy soldiers disfigured by adrenaline, how much could any individual’s biography matter? If, as Kierkegaard describes, we become ourselves through our actions, then Rogov’s characters determine themselves, and their relationships, through their traumas—self-inflicted or otherwise. “Trauma unites people,” explains Rogov, the third author featured in the “The New Xорошо,” as he weighs in on spirituality, femininity, and the impossibility of shooting heroin like a gentleman. ~T.M. De Vos 

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The Second Хорошо: Interview with Alex Pruteanu

Posted in Editorial, Fiction, Interviews, The New Хорошо on September 1, 2011 | 5 Comments »


Alex Pruteanu is the author of Short Lean Cuts, a novella which, amongst other topics, explores the ever-escalating narratives offered for public consumption. Fittingly, my acquaintance with Pruteanu developed online and progressed via Facebook, the ultimate forum for constructed narratives of life and self. A native of Romania, familiar of Moldova, and American of thirty years, Pruteanu isn’t waving a flag for any country, citing the natural clusters forming “villages, towns, or even cities” as the real loci of our allegiance. To quote Gogol Bordello, “Between the borders, the real countries hide.” In the following interview, Pruteanu, the second featured author in “The New Xорошо,” echoes the sentiment that “the programmed robots are buying and buying” and shares his thoughts on place, nostalgia, timelessness, and how bestand will eventually snuff the human species.

~T.M. De Vos

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Хорошо 1.1: Chuvash Folk Songs

Posted in Editorial, Interviews, The New Хорошо on August 16, 2011 | 1 Comment »

English version by Valery Petrovskiy

after Russian translation by Alexei Prokopyev. 

 

Requiems (2)

1/ Eh, the miserable wide world -

There is the only sun, and the only moon.

There is at least some of the wide world around!

Eh, the miserable other world—

There are seven suns, and there are seven moons there,

But no light.

***

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The First Хорошо: Interview with Valery Petrovskiy

Posted in Editorial, Fiction, Interviews, The New Хорошо on August 11, 2011 | 3 Comments »

Valery Petrovskiy is the author of numerous short stories—published both in English and in Russian—and IнтимNОе, a collection of short stories in Russian. I made Petrovskiy’s acquaintance online, after reading several of his short stories in English: struck by his symbolic language and compact narratives, I contacted him, and we soon developed a literary friendship. As we corresponded, I became more and more curious about his work, its national context, and the Chuvash Republic, his birthplace and home. In the ensuing interview, Petrovskiy, the first featured author in “The New хорошо,” discusses jazz, publishing, anthropology, and the most comfortable city in the Russian Federation.

~T.M. De Vos

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