Black Lamb

June 2009 in Black Lamb

Volume 7, Number 6 — June 2009

June 1st, 2009

The Black Lamb Review of Books

In this our fourth annual all-book issue, Terry Ross discusses a rediscovered but still largely unknown major novelist of the Forties, Fifites, and Sixties, Dawn Powell. In Forbidden literature, Dean Suess tells the reader to “get over you bad white self” and go ahead and enjoy Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus stories and Little Black Sambo. Elizabeth Fournier praises the bible of folks who like to use their car engines as kitchens in Cookin’ with gas.

In Forgotten master, Greg Roberts extols the nature writer Roderick Haig-Brown. Toby Tompkins takes a fond look back at the gentle stoner Richard Brautigan in California dreamer. In Native muses, Londoner Gillian Wilce visits the Hurd Library at Hartlebury Castle in Worcestershire. Ed Goldberg reviews four books: on baseball, radio, homelessness, and Karl Marx. In Elementary, Dan Peterson admits that he hasn’t been reading much lately, but he has published more than twenty books, and his guide has been good old Strunk & White. Elizabeth Hart finds that she can finally read the wise and thoughtful Travels with Charley, by her high-school hero John Steinbeck, in Finally read to travel. In The other Florida writer, Rod Ferrandino reminds us that Carl Hiaasen is not the only top-rank writer from that palmy state: there’s also Tim Dorsey. Artist Leslie Russell praises her first and only self-help book, Art and Fear. In Smith and the rest of them, Bud Gardner recommends the western writer Paul St. Pierre. Rosemary McLeish laments the lack of reading among today’s young people in A sense of loss. We finally welcome Irish poet William Butler Yeats into our pantheon of Honorary Black Lambs. Bridge columnist Trixie Barkis eulogizes writers Charles Goren and Terence Reese in Two great teachers. Our Wretched Excess column offers another off consumer offering, the Weather Potato. Advice columnist Millicent Marshall highly recommends the work of her colleagues Dan Savage and Miss Manners (Judith Martin). And Professor Avram Khan gives us another challenging Black Lamb Word Puzzle.

Posted by: The Editors
Category: Month summaries, The Black Lamb Review of Books | Link to this Entry