Conjunctions #44, An Anatomy Of Roads: The Quest Issue

Conjunctions #44

by Bradford Morrow (Editor), Elizabeth Hand, Lara Glenum

Leaving home is a dangerous business. Whether it's to walk across the street or travel to another continent, one never returns the same. Conjunctions: 44, An Anatomy of Roads: The Quest Issue, explores in fiction and poetry the fascinating, complex process of defamiliarization as the ultimate path to knowing oneself. John Barth contributes an astonishing, hilarious novella entitled, "I've Been Told: A Story's Story," which may be the ultimate quest narrative in that the story of a quester is narrated by the quest itself. Young Bristish author and Booker Award finalist for his first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, Jon McGregor offers a story of a distraught man who travels to an unnamed island in search of his lost father. David Schuman's story "Miss" is an eerie modern desert journey in which a man and his daughter, who is convinced that she is a cat, encounters the mother who abandoned him working in a Twilight Zone-like diner in the middle of nowhere. "Kronia," by celebrated fantasy writer Elizabeth Hand, details a love story that may or may not have actually happened over the course of decades around the world. Joanna Scott, Carole Maso, Rikki Ducornet, Nathaniel Mackey, Forrest Gander, and some 24 other writers contribute to this journey of the mind. Edited by Bradford Morrow. Paperback, 6 x 9 in./400 pgs

400 pages, Paperback

First published June 15, 2005

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

[Mike Zinn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another very good conjunctions. A little heavy on the poetry this time, but overall the usual excellence.