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ABOUTBlack Lamb was created to offer the discerning reader a stimulating selection of excellent original writing. Published monthly. (more) FREE SAMPLE COPYClick here to receive a free sample issue via U.S. mail. There is absolutely no obligation. SUBSCRIBESupport this independently published journal of fine essays. Annual subscriptions are $15 in the USA, $25 in Canada, $30 in the UK, or $35 elsewhere (all prices in US $). Click here to subscribe online via paypal or send a check to Black Lamb, 1759 View Drive, San Leandro CA 94577. QUESTIONSIf you have questions or comments regarding Black Lamb, please email us. |
This Week in Literary HistoryAugust 1st, 2010 Hungarian-born novelist Arthur Koestler (Darkness at Noon, 1940) is born in Budapest in 1905. Arthur Koestler, b. September 5, 1905, d. 1983
Suggested Reading Novel Darkness at Noon, 1940. Autobiography Spanish Testament, 1937. Scum of the Earth, 1941. Dialogue with Death, 1942. Arrow in the Blue, 1952. The Invisible Writing, 1954. Non-fiction The Yogi and the Commissar and other essays, 1945. The Challenge of Our Time, 1949. Promise and Fulfillment: Palestine 1917-1949, 1949. Insight and Outlook, 1949. The Trail of the Dinosaur and other essays, 1955. Reflections on Hanging, 1956. Suicide of a Nation, 1963. The Ghost in the Machine, 1967. The Heel of Achilles, 1974.
Posted by: The Editors This Month in Black LambVolume 8, Number 8 — August 2010August 1st, 2010 In the cover story of our August issue, Black Lamb newcomer Benjamin Feliciano begins a column that will be called Day In, Day Out with A day in the life. In American dreamer, Terry Ross tells the story of his immigrant paternal grandfather, Louis Roslafsky. John M. Daniel reflects on the guitars in his life in Gifts with strings attached.
Posted by: The Editors American dreamerThe secret life of Louis RoslafskyAugust 1st, 2010 BY TERRY ROSS I didn’t know my Grandpa Louie… really know him. My brothers and sister didn’t know him, either. I’m not sure his own son, my father, knew him.
Posted by: The Editors Last Week in Literary HistoryAugust 1st, 2010 English biographer Michael Holroyd (Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography, 1967) is born in London in 1935. Michael Holroyd, b. August 27, 1935
Suggested Reading Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography, 1967-68. Augustus John: A Biography, 1974-75. Bernard Shaw, 1988-92. A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and Their Remarkable Families, 2008.
Posted by: The Editors Last Month in Black LambVolume 8, Number 7 — July 2010July 1st, 2010 The Black Lamb Review of Books In this Black Lamb Review of Books, a seventh annual issue devoted entirely to books and reading, editor Terry Ross reflects on his springtime reading, which as included four novels by Frederick Buechner, Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, two books by Jim Harrison, a Forties noir classic, and novels by Wallace Stegner, Edith Wharton, and Frederic Raphael. Greg Roberts reports on the autobiography of Isaac Stephenson, an honest politician vilified during his lifetime.
Posted by: The Editors A decent manBetrayal in WisconsinJuly 1st, 2010 BY GREG ROBERTS I like reading books that no one has heard of. The 1950 memoirs of Valentin R. Garfias, Garf From Mexico, was limited to 2,000 copies, one of which was discarded by Cal State University, Hayward, ending up at the Salvation Army store. An excellent read — and if you do read it, you are in the dozens, like Spix macaws.
Is it an important work? Very important. Obscurity means nothing. Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat languished for more than a century before it was rediscovered. And what about Moby-Dick? So there. Isaac Stephenson’s remarkable life conveys a clear message to us: people living in the mid-1800s were amazingly resourceful, resilient, and self-reliant, and we need to be more like them. We are malnourished slugs, slaves to larger machines, and mentally torpid as well, the light bulb in our brain flickering like a feeble firefly.
Posted by: The Editors Two months ago in Black LambVolume 8, Number 6 — June 2010June 1st, 2010 In the cover essay of our June issue, A Mad Tea Party, Toby Tompkins takes a look at America’s screw-loose political movement. Greg Roberts remembers raising bunnies as a kid with In praise of rabbits. In Name dropping in the Bush League, John M. Daniel relates family anecdotes of the George Bushes, father and son.
Posted by: The Editors Name dropping in the Bush LeagueJune 1st, 2010 BY JOHN M. DANIEL My late brother, Neil Daniel, used to enjoy saying, “The last time I saw George Herbert Walker Bush, he was sitting on my toilet, moving his bowels.” (Actually, he said “Poppy Bush,” not the full four-part name, and he had a less formal way of saying “moving his bowels,” too.) Neil was a wit with a sophisticated sense of humor, so it’s curious that he would bring this matter up, and equally curious that it always got a laugh. After all, we’re talking about an act that everyone in the room, presumably, has done more than once. Even future presidents of the United States, future protectors of the Free World.
I don’t think my brother was simply looking for a cheap laugh; nor was he making a pompous egalitarian statement along the lines of “Everybody poops.” No, Neil was doing some sophisticated name-dropping, downplaying the long-standing close relationship our family had with the Bushes of Kennebunkport.
Posted by: The Editors May 2010 in Black LambVolume 8, Number 5 – May 2010May 1st, 2010 The All Memorial Issue In the cover essay of our All-Memorial Issue, Meeting Guy, John M. Daniel recalls his long-distance relationship with an extraordinary first cousin, Guy Waterman. Our page two feature, Eastertide, is a letter written in 2002 describing the colorful and moving Paschal traditions in an Amalfi coast village.
Posted by: The Editors Brief encountersMay 1st, 2010 BY TOBY TOMPKINS Anyone who’s survived for sixty-seven years and been even peripherally involved in the arts has met famous people, now defunct, from time to time. The trick, it seems to me, is to write about those meetings without sounding like a name-dropping show-off. Unless you’re My first notable encounter with a Notable involved Robert Penn Warren. He was the uncle of a Yale classmate and was teaching at the university at the time.
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