Conjunctions #51, The Death Issue

Conjunctions #51

by Bradford Morrow (Editor), David Shields (Editor)

As Cormac McCarthy wrote, "Death is the major issue in the world. For you, for me, for all of us. It just is. To not be able to talk about it is very odd." For the Fall 2008 issue of "Conjunctions," editor Bradford Morrow invited award-winning writer David Shields, author of the 2008 "New York Times" bestseller "The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead," to gather work from a diverse cross-section of contemporary authors to address the theme of death. The subject prompted responses ranging from the profound to the jocular, from philosophy to consciousness, fear, doom, irony and even humor. "The Death Issue" features innovative essays and meditations by Dave Eggers, Joyce Carol Oates, Tom Robbins, Dr. Pauline W. Chen, David Gates, Mark Doty, Robin Hemley, Albert Goldbarth, Joe Wenderoth, Daphne Merkin, Dr. Lauren Slater, Greg Bottoms, Susan Daitch, John D'Agata, Richard Stern, Mary Ruefle and Christopher Sorrentino, among others.
David Shields is the author of eight previous books, including "Black Planet" (a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), "Remote" (winner of the PEN/Revson Award) and "Dead Languages" (winner of the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award). His essays and stories have appeared in "The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Yale Review, Village Voice, Utne Reader, Salon, Slate, McSweeney's" and "The Believer." The Chairman of the 2007 National Book Awards nonfiction panel, he is a recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, among many other awards.

Genres: Anthologies

400 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2008

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

[Skjam! · Rating 3 out of 5]

Conjunctions is a literary journal published twice a year by Bard College. Each issue contains essays, short fiction, poetry and less classifiable writing on a given subject, with this issue being about death. Literary journals tend to have a connotation of pretentiousness, and death is one of the primal subjects, so I approached this 2008 issue with a bit of trepidation.

The issue starts strong with an essay entitled “The Sutra of Maggots and Blowflies” by Sallie Tisdale. It’s a stomach-churning but very informative look at flies, Buddhism, and the Buddha nature of flies. The ending piece is “Andalucia” by H.G. Carrillo, the story of a writer mourning his artist lover, who has died of AIDS.

In between, the most memorable pieces are Joyce Carol Oates’ “Dear Husband”, a chilling suicide note; and “St. Francis Preaches to the Birds” by David Ives, a not-quite-working comedic play about the saint’s encounter with vultures. Several of the pieces caused me to shed a tear. Sadly, as I cannot make head or tail of the appeal of modern poetry, I feel unable to comment on whether any of the poetry was good. Two pieces are illustrated with photographs, the only visual art in the issue.

With forty pieces altogether, this is a thick volume that takes some grit to get through. I understand that the Oates story is in one of her own anthologies, so if noir fiction is your thing, you might want to check that out. The rest is a mixed bag; see if your library system has a copy of this or other issues so you can see if Conjunctions is something you want to subscribe to.

“I am merely departing”–Lucius Seneca.

[Jeff Russo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had my own brush with death in 2010, so when I saw this on the shelf at the Strand I had to pick it up. The blurb promised “essays and meditations”, so for some reason I was expecting mostly personal, nonfictional ruminations of the sort provided by e.g. Christopher Sorrentino, Kyoko Mori and Michael Logan, but the material went far afield of that, poetry, fiction, you name it.

You'd think a compilation called “The Death Issue” would if nothing else have narrowly targeted material, but in a few cases I thought the inclusion of a particular piece was dubious re: the death theme. I guess sometimes writers just have material laying about and pitch it off when the opportunity arises.

And actually, if the book had been more what I expected I may have had an even cooler attitude to it. A bit of a downer. I thought I liked downers, but I guess I like a narrowly focused downer with a purpose.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a great essay in here by Mark Doty called "Bijou," plus some wonderful and stark poems by David Guterson, of all people. Lance Olsen, too, is great, and Edward Hoagland, Robert Clark, Christopher Sorrentino -- all good stuff.