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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' CategoryGod in an awful moodJune 1st, 2003 BY GENE RYDER I’d like a head count of how many people get slaughtered in the Old Testament. It has to be in the millions, or gazillions, maybe even infinity plus one. It’s really a murder fest, and if you go there searching for comfort, as I did here recently in a time of need, then what you’re liable to find is a lot of locusts, leprosy, Sodomites, stories like the heartbreaking binding of Isaac, God just seems to be in an awful mood in the Old Testament, and I’m not sure that I blame Him. I mean, He’s given everybody the great gift of life, and love, and this beautiful blue ball of a world, and yet look what they were doing at the time with that gift.
Posted by: The Editors Trash and meJune 1st, 2003 BY REBECCA OWEN In junior high I knew what I was supposed enjoy reading. I knew it depended on perspective and so I read it all and liked nearly everything that I read for one reason or another. I read the short books assigned at school, the longer and stranger things suggested by helpful teachers, the fun and unexpected things suggested by our odd collection of neighbors, the books we had to read because they were so great, according to friends, the great lit one sister foisted on me and the trash from under the bed of another. On my own I read my parents’ library, which was a mix of Book of the Month Club, military history, nature writing, and travelogues, with an occasional serious work slipped in. I read cookbooks and Gourmet from the time I was in grade school. This describes what I read today, more or less, although the trash I like now is more in the line of murder mystery than the Harold Robbins/Jacqueline Susan stuff favored by my sister. And the Book of the Month club has been replaced by the award lists.
Posted by: The Editors A turn for the verseJune 1st, 2003 BY GILLIAN WILCE I have been doing anything rather than write this piece. The task of writing about an influential book ought to be a delight. And yet I have done the ironing, I have read a crime novel (by Ian Rankin — very enjoyable, but not a candidate), I can’t think of a single book that changed my life in an obvious way (except perhaps a psychology textbook, which led me to Jung, which led me to psychoanalysis, which led me to … – but that is another story, one which would probably have unfurled anyway from some beginning or other). On the other hand, I can’t imagine what a life without books would have been like. They are part of my fabric, just as they are of the fabric of this city.
Posted by: The Editors Hope for the indolentJune 1st, 2003
The book was a birthday gift from a friend, as I recall, and I believe it had been intended as a joke. The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment by Thaddeus Golas was a narrow and very thin paperback, and I’m sure I shrugged it off at the time with a “Thanks, I really need this,” stated with self-deprecating irony but with no idea of just how potent this little book really was.
Posted by: The Editors Books aren’t life, but then what is?June 1st, 2003 BY ED GOLDBERG What books changed my life? The Three Little Kittens, which is the first book I learned to read by myself. I’ve never been the same.
Posted by: The Editors A story of languageJune 1st, 2003
One of my fondest childhood memories is the every-Sunday excursion with my father to the Cobbs Creek branch of the Philadelphia Public Library. Dad was an appliance salesman for a small independent store, these days a vanished institution done in by suburban malls and national chains. His job required him to work miserably long hours, and well into my childhood he would arrive home only shortly before my bedtime. Sunday was the only day I got to spend any real time with him, so I especially cherished our weekly library ritual.
Posted by: The Editors The best books of 2002June 1st, 2003 BY CAROL WOLFE Dear Carol, My husband and I have been avid readers of both your column and Black Lamb since 1946. We have been particularly fond of your yearly book issue and, after reading it, have had some lively discussions. My husband Gilbert saves every copy despite the fact that he never agrees with your opinions. He loves to pull out the issue from April 1947 in which, upon the release of Bend Sinister, you describe Vladimir Nabokov as a “…third rate hack. Next time you have a hankering for a white Russian, may I suggest one part Kahlua to two parts vodka.” I have heard that you were unable to do a book issue in 2002 due to the fact that you were in Sweden to accept some type of award and was wondering if you would be resuming the tradition in 2003. Gretchen S.
Posted by: The Editors A Week in Literary HistoryDecember 30th, 2002 English writer Rudyard Kipling (Kim, 1901) is born in Bombay, British India, in 1865. Rudyard Kipling, b. December 30, 1865, d. 1936
Suggested Reading Novels The Light that Failed, 1890. Captains Courageous, 1897. Kim, 1901. Puck of Pook’s Hill, 1906. Short stories Plain Tales from the Hills, 1888. The Phantom Rickshaw, 1888. The Jungle Book, 1893. The Second Jungle Book, 1894. Just So Stories, 1902. Poetry Mandalay, 1890. Gunga Din, 1890. If—, 1895. Non-fiction The White Man’s Burden, 1899.
Posted by: The Editors A Week in Literary HistoryDecember 30th, 2002 In 1869, Anglo-Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock (The Garden of Folly, 1924) is born in Swanmore, Hampshire. Stephen Leacock, b. December 30, 1869, d. 1944
Suggested Reading Humor Literary Lapses, 1910. Nonsense Novels, 1911. Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, 1912. Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich, 1914. Further Foolishness, 1916. The Garden of Folly, 1924. Literary Studies Essays and Literary Studies, 1916. Mark Twain, 1932. Charles Dickens: His Life and Work, 1933.
Posted by: The Editors A Week in Literary HistoryDecember 26th, 2002 In 1891, American novelist Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer, 1934) is born in New York City.
Miller settled happily into his role as aging satyr during the Sixties and Seventies, but before that he had helped open the floodgates in literature with his sexually explicit (and sexually fixated) novels. His penis (and his novels) aside, he is an amusing, likeable, and vivid writer who left some memorable books behind, and who spoke the plain truth far more often than not. Suggested Reading Novels Tropic of Cancer, 1934. Black Spring, 1936. Tropic of Capricorn, 1939. The Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, 1949-60. Other writings The Colossus of Maroussi, 1941. The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, 1945. The Books in My Life, 1952. Quiet Days in Clichy, 1956. Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, 1957.
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