Conjunctions #58, Riveted: The Obsession Issue

Conjunctions #58

by Bradford Morrow (Editor), John Ashbery (Contributor), Joyce Carol Oates (Contributor)

The "Riveted" issue of "Conjunctions" explores the world of fixation through previously unpublished fiction, poetry and essays. Compulsion, it seems, is as limitless as the imagination itself. Even the most disciplined among us has at some moment been the spellbound prey of the irresistible, has been influenced by an idee fixe so dynamic and overwhelming as to make life itself shrink into the background. In "Riveted," the reader will tour narratives of mesmerists and hoarders, conspiracy theorists and martyrs, fetishists and addicts, saints and sinners. This issue investigates the dynamic, magnetic force known as obsession and how it can reshape us, for better or worse, into people we no longer recognize as ourselves. Several dozen innovative contemporary writers explore this facet of human nature including Joyce Carol Oates, Jonathan Carroll, Fiona Maazel, Christopher Sorrentino, Peter Gizzi, Dawn Tripp, John Ashbery and many others.

380 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2012

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

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

obsession, revulsion, fascination, bafflement, and other emotions that burn with lonely fire. fiction and prose hit me stronger than the poetry this issue, with favorites including a story about sheep, canals, and imagined mountains, a creative essay about healing machine artist/creatory emery blagdon, and a story about a man obsessively hunting for a copy of august strindberg's 'inferno'. a couple of stories overwhelmed me with streaming language, perhaps there was something of the obsessive in their creation as well as their content. in any case, a fine issue of Conjunctions but not a favorite.

[Mike Zinn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent issue of Conjunctions. I particularly enjoyed Julia Elliott, Stephen O'Connor and Brian Conn, but there were many other great stories. One of the better recent issues of this series.

[Frank Hoppe · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's generally a mixed bag ranging from incandescent to to totally incomprehensible, at least to me.