Conjunctions #60, in Absentia

Conjunctions #60

by Bradford Morrow (Editor)

Missing persons, phantom limbs, lost masterpieces, lost islands, sensory deprivation and amnesia: the "In Absentia" issue of "Conjunctions" explores the presence of absence and the black holes in our everyday lives. The concept of the partial, of the unwhole (and unwholesome) is elucidated in stories, poems and memoirs that take vanishing and vacancy as both their subject and their form, creating fractional characters and void-riddled landscapes out of missing chapters, unfinished sentences, half-heard whispers and blotted manuscripts. This sixtieth issue of the indispensable literary magazine features the work of Joyce Carol Oates, Maxine Chernoff, Brandon Krieg, Julia Elliott, Miranda Mellis, Karen Hays and Samuel R. Delaney and many others.

380 pages, Paperback

First published July 31, 2013

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

[Nathanimal · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm giving this five stars not because it was perfect — in any collection you're bound to skip a few — but because it's by far the best experience I've had with any kind of anthology or lit journal. It did exactly what you'd want a lit journal to do: it introduced me to some new writers, it gave me some new work by old faves, many of its experiments caught me off guard in a good way. Stand outs for me were Stephen O'Connor's story "Next to Nothing," the mind-bending, Sebald-ish essay "The Cubes," by Karen Hayes, and of course Walser's three "dramalets." But I could go on. A full table of contents here.

I was once intrigued with Can Xue, whose story "Venus" is included here, but ever since I read an interview with her she has become unbearable to me. I seem to remember her saying something like the only books worth reading are like the Canterbury Tales and the bible. Oh and that she doesn't edit. She's so interesting and wonderful she just has to write down whatever's in her head and it's as good as the Canterbury Tales and the bible.

But anyway, even with that, I'm a happy new Conjunctions subscriber.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

good issue, lots of range as always but with the theme of the volume nicely present throughout.

i didn't love the walser plays. favorite pieces were from joanna ruocco (a new name to me) and robert coover, with a selection from his now-published gigantic novel 'brunist day of wrath'.