I was out from 7am until midnight yesterday and so am just now waking from a fog. Many of you have already linked to this goodness, but I would be entirely remiss if I did not make another go of it. The Winter 2008 Issue of The Quarterly Conversation is up now and it's a douzy.
Such is the beauty of working with Mr. Esposito -- you focus on your work, you deliver your work. And you have no idea of the absolute genius of the other work until it's all put together and you think: my goodness that man has been busy! There are so many good reviews and essays and thoughts that I'm a little overwhemled with the goodness of it all.
The issue offers a Hispanic Literature Special, with excellent essays by Scott, Marcelo Ballvé, Javier Moreno, Elizabeth Wadell and Matt Bowman. Sam Sacks has an essay on Vasily Grossman.
Reviews abound as well, including:
Chad Post's review of Autonauts of the Cosmoroute by Julio Cortazar
John Issac Lingan's review of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
Elizabeth Wadell's review of Vibrator by Mari Akasaka
E.J. Van Lanan's review of The Maias by Jose Maria Eça de Queirós
Ryan Call's review of God is Dead by Ron Currie, Jr.
Scott Bryan Wilon's review of The Meat and Spirit Plan by Selah Saterstrom
Daniel Whatley's review of Partial List of People to Bleach by Gary Lutz
My review of Sons and Other Flammable Objects by Porochista Khakpour
John Sutherland's review of How to Read a Novel by John Sutherland
Dave Munger's review of The Body Has a Mind of Its Own by Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee
Megan Keane's review of Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger
And interviews!:
Barrett Hatchcock interviews Charles D'Ambrosio (Cheating at Canasta is currently blowing my mind, btw)
Anne Cammon interviews Pascale Ferran
See? The goodness is almost too much to bear. It's a fine issue and worthy of poring over for the rest of the month and beyond.
UPDATE: Clearly I am still in a fog. My William Trevor (Cheating at Canasta) sits just below my Charles D'Ambrosio (Dead Fish Museum) on my desk. In my excitement for both, I mis-typed and made an ass of myself. I thought I'd point it out before any of you do. I'd delete it entirely, but where would the journalistic integrity be in that? But hey, no sleep + two excellent short story collections + two male writers I completely dig and have recently been reading...you could see how such a mistake could be made? Right? I know, a weak plea, but I thought I'd try.
