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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. |
Archive for the 'Books and Authors' CategoryAged in WoodJune 1st, 2003 BY D.K. HOLM I remember finding coveted film books the way most people remember where and when they first saw a favorite movie. In the case of the book Hitchcock’s Films, it was fall of 1971. I was in the Portland State University bookstore, then a massive monument to university press and special-interest books (now a textbook clearing house), with thorough holdings in most fields. After fantasizing for years about a career as either a comic book creator or a movie director, I discovered that I enjoyed reading about films more than making them. It takes a special personality type to helm the unwieldy juggernaut of a film crew. It takes no personality at all to read a book about it.
Posted by: The Editors Memorable Miss OsborneJune 1st, 2003 BY GRANT MENZIES To single out one book, any more than a whole library’s worth of them, as being of most influence on one’s development — as reader, writer, and human being — is like having to list your favorite kisses from an unforgettable lover. But I can simplify the process by counting on one hand the books which, read before age twenty, had such a powerful effect on me that the impressions remain vividly: Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind (which I found in my Southern grandmother’s house when I was eleven and read without stopping over the course of two days and a night); Zelda Fitzgerald’s Save Me the Waltz (the copy given to my mother by her analyst, who curiously thought Zelda’s unhappy story would make inspiring material for my mother’s own recovery from a nervous breakdown); Ferdinand Mayr-Ofen’s The Tragic Idealist (a life of so-called Mad King Ludwig II of Bavaria, which set me on course for studying and writing historical biographies and put me in love with the handsome young monarch pictured in the frontispiece); and Dame Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (which, with West’s painter’s eye and composer’s ear for coloring and orchestrating ideas and images to produce breathtakingly beautiful moods and insights, had a huge influence on my own writing style). Yet it was a children’s book, not quite fit for the above list of masterworks, that made the greatest, longest-lasting impression: Wilson Gage’s Miss Osborne-the-Mop.
Posted by: The Editors Mighty MarcelJune 1st, 2003 BY JIM PATTON Call me a Proust snob. Whatever. I’d rather be that than one of these “well-read” people who’ve never had the experience of A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) or who tell you
Posted by: The Editors The man who couldn’t think straightJune 1st, 2003
Thoreau messed me up pretty bad. I read Walden at seventeen, and it turned me into a non-materialist for most of my life. As a result, I endangered my family by driving them around in a hundred-dollar Peugeot 504 with bald tires that were ready to blow any second. I thought I was saving the planet. I’m better now. We have a thousand-dollar Toyota van with new tires. I’ve lost some respect for Thoreau. He’s a wonderfully clever writer, but he couldn’t think straight. The imprisonment at the pond, in a hell-hole of a cabin, slaving over a goddamn bean patch, would have driven anyone to suicide, except for one thing — he was writing the book. With the inspiration of his art, it didn’t matter where he was. Same for Beethoven. His drive to compose music made him oblivious to his filthy room with the many unemptied piss pots. Anyone without a major artistic project had better stay away from a Walden situation. Better to exist in a studio apartment with a part-time job at Burger King and a basic cable package.
Posted by: The Editors The Morocco caseJune 1st, 2003 BY ZACH DUNDAS In the first lines of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four, Sherlock Holmes takes a hypodermic syringe from a “neat morocco case” and injects himself with cocaine. He offers a shot to his roommate Dr. Watson, an unemployed veteran nursing wounds from a hideous colonial war, himself half in I discovered this scene as I sat crosslegged (or as we still said in 1980s Montana, “Indian-style”) on the floor of the bedroom my brother and I once shared. It was probably winter or, if the month was October, November, April or May, something close. Across my lap, a dogeared copy of a 1950s omnibus titled The Boy’s Sherlock Holmes, borrowed from Williard Elementary’s little library. (They don’t really publish books just for boys any more, do they?) I was ten years old or maybe eleven, and as the detective jabbed a needle into his vein, Literature’s darker possibilities burst open before me, a dusky and faintly malevolent orchid.
Posted by: The Editors I hate booksJune 1st, 2003 BY LANE BROWNING When I was about nine I fell in love with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I was a solitary kid, and books were a seductive escape. I used to sit under a flowering bush in my family’s side yard, soggy peanut butter sandwich in hand, smelly little terrier snuffling by my side, just reading. Lewis Carroll’s imaginative scenarios about the little girl down the rabbit hole spoke directly to my rebel heart, and I memorized long passages and fancied myself a modern-day Alice: she was so crisp, so witty, so practical and peppy. She made sparkling observations, and her world was speckled with talking animals! A dream book, a book to carry with me everywhere. Then I found out that the Rev. Dodgson was a pedophile. He converted his obsession with Alice Liddell into something sanitized and mainstream when all he really wanted was to photograph her in her underwear.
Posted by: The Editors Charlotte triumphantJune 1st, 2003 BY MICHELE GENDELMAN CHAPTER 1 It was 196_, during that humid, pre-cable summer between third and fourth grades, when my mother gave me her copy of Jane Eyre. Whether dear Mammá did so for my edification or merely to quell my restive humors, it mattered not; for upon learning that Charlotte Brontë was obliged to adopt the masculine nom de plume Currer Bell to hide her gender, CHAPTER 4 How cruelly our orphan’d heroine suffered at the hands of her scornful aunt and vile brute of a cousin! And when Jane dared defend herself, she was summarily rewarded with a blow to the head and confined to a haunted bedchamber. Still, her courage inspired me; and thus when my parents insisted that I wash the dinner dishes while my brothers (hearty and dexterous lads both) were at liberty, I protested. “Fie, goodly sir and madam,” I cried, “but never shall I tolerate such gross injustice!” Suspension of privileges, however, proved even less tolerable, so for the next fortnight I played scullery maid… till one day dear Mammá (she of the breakfast and luncheon dishes) threatened a rebellion of her own, leading to dear Papá’s immediate purchase of a Kenmore dishwasher with Pot Scrubber Cycle.
Posted by: The Editors Pagan primerJune 1st, 2003 BY STEFFEN SILVIS Her hair needed pulling. She wore poor clothes that we could mock, and had “germs with no returns.” She sat silently while we stood and pledged our allegiance to the flag each morning: there was something about her religion, we were told. She never wore a Hallowe’en costume, was excused from carol practice, and Unfortunately, she rode my bus, and it often happened that the last available place was next to her. One morning, to the catcalls of classmates, I was forced to share her seat. She sat poring over a colorful book, and as she turned a page my attention was immediately drawn to an illustration. There was a great hole in the earth, and a dark man in a chariot pulled by four black horses was descending into the underworld. In one hand he held the reins to the steeds, while in the other he grasped, as captive, a frightened young woman. “Do you know about the Greek Gods?” I heard the voice next to me say. I looked up at her and admitted that I didn’t. “Here,” she said, handing me the book. “These are my favorite stories.”
Posted by: The Editors Sic transit horror mundiJune 1st, 2003 BY DEAN SUESS Eventually, it deteriorated into an unfriendly competition, of which she was completely unaware. It had begun friendly enough, I suppose. She was an English literature major, and I was majoring in music. I would cap her quotes, and she would cite
Posted by: The Editors That’s obsceneJune 1st, 2003 BY D.K. HOLM Two magazines were supremely important to adolescent boys in the early to late Sixties. One was Mad. This satirical, often sophomoric monthly undermined the mainstream society’s serious and popular cultural efforts. From the late Fifties through roughly 1962, Mad contributed impetus to the underground comix industry, to the anti-war and civil rights protests, and to the free speech movement. The other magazine was Playboy. In fact Playboy at its best appeals only to adolescent boys. The world of easy sex and sophisticated men with astute knowledge of cigars, wine, whiskey, jazz groups, and obscure Asian sexual tricks, men who appeal effortlessly to robust woman who have no inhibitions about providing sex: this is an adolescent fantasy (and obviously not confined to males aged ten to nineteen). Playboy embodies the James Bond ethos; never were a cultural icon and a publicity organ better matched. James Bond was one of two figures of enormous importance to Playboy magazine’s sense of itself. The other was Lenny Bruce.
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