Conjunctions #57, Kin

Conjunctions #57

by Bradford Morrow (Editor)

Nothing is more familiar, nothing more ineffable than the emotional prism, the blood knot that constitutes family. We can try to leave them, they can disinherit us, but there is no dispelling DNA, no true exile from that which binds us with our kin. In "Conjunctions: 57, Kin," more than two dozen contributors, including Rick Moody, Karen Russell and Jonathan Lethem, explore the intricacies and knots of family ties. Essayist Karen Hays offers a meditation on a sledding outing with her children on the day that her son's first pet dies, contemplating everything from Euclidean geometry to the algorithm used in credit card encryption to the "wintry vista" of infinity. Micaela Morrissette weighs in with a Calvinoesque portrait of two siblings whose powers far exceed the everyday. This special issue of "Conjunctions" addresses the labyrinthine nature of kinship through essays, fiction and poetry.

380 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 2011

About the author

Bradford Morrow has lived for the past thirty years in New York City and rural upstate New York, though he grew up in Colorado and lived and worked in a variety of places in between. While in his mid-teens, he traveled through rural Honduras as a member of the Amigos de las Americas program, serving as a medical volunteer in the summer of 1967. The following year he was awarded an American Field Service scholarship to finish his last year of high school as a foreign exchange student at a Liceo Scientifico in Cuneo, Italy. In 1973, he took time off from studying at the University of Colorado to live in Paris for a year. After doing graduate work on a Danforth Fellowship at Yale University, he moved to Santa Barbara, California, to work as a rare book dealer. In 1981 he relocated to New York City to the literary journal Conjunctions, which he founded with the poet Kenneth Rexroth, and to write novels. He and his two cats divide their time between NYC and upstate New York.

Visit his website at www.bradfordmorrow.com.

Reviews

[Erik · Rating 1 out of 5]

Someone said that the purpose of literature is to entertain and to instruct. In that order. I believe the editors at Conjunctions have some other purpose in mind. Unreadable. Maybe someday, when I'm in the mood for the equivalent of a root canal, I'll come back to this. Probably not.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

i'm not really a big fan of memoirs, and in this volume in particular it was the memoirs and memories that dragged. the fictions and poetry were stellar as always.