It’s the first of the month, and that means the new issue of Open Letters Monthly has just appeared, all bright and shiny like a new penny! As always, the Table of Contents is as eclectic and inviting as we could make it. Some highlights:
Steve Donoghue marks Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee with a look at three new biographies of the woman who remains, despite all the attention, remarkably opaque to outsiders.
Greg Waldmann reviews Steve Coll’s grimly disturbing look at the reach and power of Exxon Mobil.
John Cotter does a “Peer Review” feature on Toni Morrison’s Home, reviewing first the reviewers then the novel itself.
In our two “Second Glance” features this month, Robert Latona revisits The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Álvaro Mutis, while Joshua Lustig shows that David Halberstam’s Vietnam War classic The Best and the Brightest is as relevant as ever.
Steve Danziger looks at the “Voltaire of science fiction,” Robert Sheckley.
I explore the failure that is George Eliot’s Romola and wonder whether success isn’t sometimes overrated in our measures of literary greatness.
All this plus Alien, Diablo III, Irma Heldman’s ‘It’s a Mystery’ column, and more–including more from me on George Eliot (this time, Felix Holt) in our selection of pieces from the OLM archives. Come on over and read for a while!
Novel Readings 