Once again, a new month has brought with it a sparkling new issue of Open Letters Monthly. If you haven’t already, I hope you’ll go check it out. As always, there’s a wide range of coverage and styles. We’re spotlighting Steve Danziger’s review of Jonathan Franzen’s new translation of Karl Kraus (you know, the one in which he tells us ‘what’s wrong with the modern world’). You’ll also find John Cotter’s review of Jeremias Gotthelf’s very creepy sounding The Black Spider, Steve Donoghue on Korak, son of Tarzan, poetry editor Maureen Thorson on the ‘piercing unreason’ of Ange Mlinko’s poetry, my own unimpressed take on Elizabeth Gilbert’s much-hyped The Signature of All Things, Justin Hickey on Abominable Science, Spencer Lenfield on the enduring mystique of Pompeii, and much more. If you like what you find, do help us get the word out.
This month marks exactly four years since my first ever contribution to Open Letters Monthly, which was this little essay on Trollope. It has been quite a four years for me: I can’t imagine how else I would have found the courage to write, never mind a venue in which to publish, the range of reviews and essays that followed. Here’s to our next four years!
Novel Readings 