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Letters
David Tomb's Drawings
From: Tom Bradley
Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2003 16:33:58 -0700 (PDT)
To: email [at] oysterboyreview.org
Subject: response to letter about David Tomb's drawings
David Tomb's drawings go deep as any dream I've had. They are moving and powerful to a degree that I can't find words to express. I know nothing about David Tomb, but I know the subject of these drawings better than my own brother. I am a contributor to issue 16, and my copies are kept out in the open, laid out flat in the middle of the table, for everyone to see in a way they've never seen in their lives.
Tom Bradley
. . .
Max Ruback's Road
From: candice
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 12:40:28 -0500
To: email [at] oysterboyreview.org
Subject: story feedback
i'm a fan of maud newton's blog . . . which highlighted a story in your lit mag . . . called "the road."
i was real impressed with both the writing and the story. as a reader, i had a gut level "oh," when i finished the piece, a signal that the prose was right on target. i guess that's what impressed me most about this story . . . all the "hits" . . . the writer was able to achieve with such eye-opening insights in his very clean sentences. i'm a non-fiction writer, and often in awe of my fiction breathren who can evoke feelings and passions in a reader from their own creative images and visions. this story hit the "awe" button. a big pat on the back to you guys for publishing and finding such a great piece . . . and please forward my kudos to the author.
candice.
. . .
Rand Clifford's Castling
From: Jennyfer Deffland
Date: Tue, 13 May 2003 09:55:40 +0200
To: email [at] oysterboyreview.org
Subject: Castling
Dear Lucy Harrison,
Maybe I should start my answer to your review of Castling by Rand Clifford with citing your last paragraph:
"Having said that, I can't get the damn Pot Book out of my head. I've told all my friends about it. Mostly about how much I didn't like it, but still. It's not every day a book sticks with me this way. Years from now I bet I'll remember this book—the camera in the moose's head, and the RV sniper, and the neighbor marking his territory with the rubber from his peeling-out car tires. I already can't remember nearly as much about the Bee Book, although I liked it more. Perhaps that says something about Mr. Clifford's imagination, or perhaps about his social commentary. In any case, I think I might give his next book a try. As long as he leaves out the ellipses . . ."
Why, do you think, are you not able to get the book out of your head? Maybe because there is not only a story but even a funny and intriguing story? Maybe because his social commentary on American lifestyle is quite sharp? Maybe because Mr. Clifford's imagination goes far beyond yours? I suggest you answer these questions by yourself.
Why, do you think, do people write stories and want other people to read them? To forget them as fast as possible? To have them count ellipses? I guess most people have definitely other reasons for writing and reading.
I really enjoyed reading the Pot Book. What a funny story. The social commentary, however, left a bitter after-taste in my cap. Though Casting has already been published in 1995 it is pretty up-to-date, don't you think? America's hegemony and strife for power is fueled by Big Oil & Co. It's an everyday concern in the news these days, already heard about? Considering alternative energy sources should be a concern for all of us. To avoid at least future wars on oil. Hemp is such an alternative resource. And yes, you can even smoke it, wear it, eat it, put it on your skin and use it as a medical drug. Why didn't you question what your government did to ban hemp, the oldest natural resource of mankind, instead of counting ellipses?
I heard a scientist say: "The stone-age didn't end because there were no stones left." We could end the fossil oil age by promoting alternative energy resources. But definitely not as long as there is the so-called "American Way of Life" or Consumerism that characterizes the American attitude towards the rest of the world: Take it all and take it now. You don't leave enough for others. And, worst of all, you think you have the right to act like that. And this is what Clifford described. I bet you would enjoy it more, if you weren't an American.
Just take yourself: "I also don't believe that a big castle filled with marijuana (why do you use this term instead of hemp or cannabis?) plants and fenced with wire and taking up several city blocks wouldn't get some kind of negative attention from the police."
Nobody had any idea that there were these plants in the castle, remember? They did quite a lot to avoid exactly that. Like installing a camera in Kudu's head. But for you, alone the fact that there is a big castle makes it necessary for the police to look what's going on there. How American. Suspicion and control.
Maybe we really need aliens to get rid of this Americanism flooding the world that Clifford described in his entertaining Pot Book. In this case I actually do hope that they'll arrive in time. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against Americans but against the American attitude and lifestyle. Don't you sometimes think by yourself that it's obscene? And hollow? I can't prevent myself from thinking that some Americans could need a couple of 101 lectures in ecology, democracy, politics and other essential areas. Maybe thus more of you would get up from the couches and go to vote next time. Honestly, don't you think there are some of your fellow Americans—not as informed as you seem to be—which could need some insight in issues discussed in Castling?
Castling is fiction, not a true story. And as such it is fun to read it. I'm sure this is not the first time you find aliens mentioned in a book. Regarding the women, I partly share your opinion. But then, he is a man, what do you expect? And it wasn't his goal to write a book on women either. Take all of them together and you get one real woman.
Anyway, to me it seems the author had achieved what he wanted: Your attention. Even for years as you said. Thus, I suggest you spend some days of these years with reading it again. Maybe you enjoy it more the second time. And by the way, you missed some of the details and who knows what else: it wasn't a moose, the fence is not made by wire, and the castle doesn't take several blocks. But, of course, you were certainly quite busy counting ellipses . . . Hey, why don't you count the question marks in my letter?
Regards,
Jennyfer Deffland
Translator, Munich, Germany
. . .
David Tomb's Drawings
[Postcard received February 24, 2003]
The David Tomb illustrations in issue #16 may be well executed but they are astoundingly repulsive and an unbelievably bad choice for a literary journal or any publication, aside from Serial Killer magazine. Too bad for all the contributors whose work fell into that un-keepable issue.
[Unsigned]
. . .
David Lawrence's Dementia Pugilistica
From: David Lawrence
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 12:19:42 EST
To: email [at] oysterboyreview.org
Subject: (no subject)
Dear Jeffery Beam,
I enjoyed Reginald Harris's review of Dementia Pugilistica in issue 16. But I'm afraid he got it all wrong. Because of the drama and excitement of my life, which is unlike a typical poet's, he assumed that I was writing as a "persona" and that I was relaying "dreams of being a boxer." The unlikely fact is that I was a boxer, that I did fight an exhibition with Comacho in Atlantic City and that I did knock out Caveman Lee at the Mirage Hotel in Vegas. This is not a "stance." I was all that and more. He suggests, "One wants more from Lawrence, wants him to stretch, reach, dig deeper, and be more honest with us and himself concerning the emotions he's experiencing." An interesting point but the period of life that I am writing about was a surface, glitzy period and the key to understanding it is to enter the dance of the dialectic of events. They do not need to be explained. They are what they are. There interpretation is that they existed at all. He thinks I relayed a series of "tall tales." Everything in the book is true. I was also a multimillionaire on Wall Street before I got thrown in jail. The beauty of my book is that I am the only person with my Renaissance background who also has a magnificent facility for poetry. Most professional fighters are not word sensitive. Most wheelers and dealers on Wall Street don't contemplate language. Even in prose, the only manly man we've ever had is Hemingway. And he mostly hid behind guns and shot animals or did some sophomoric sparring. I don't think he ever fought pro. Maybe not even amateur.
Nevertheless, I do appreciate your review. I just want to reiterate, like Hollyfield,
I am the real deal.
Sincerely,
David Lawrence
. . .
Rand Clifford's Castling
From: Ernest Buckler
Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2003 01:03:56 -0800
To: email [at] oysterboyreview.org
Subject: Castling
Dear Ed.;
I've read Castling, and must say that Lucy Harrison's review [OBR 16] reflects her viewpoint more accurately than Clifford's story. I laughed til I fell out of my chair, I cried, I turned pages late into several nights reading and re-reading just to make sure I hadn't missed a delicious nugget—once I'd discovered their hidden presence in the stream. Castling is a gem—for those who've been there and done that, or at least have been close enough to reality to know that there ARE people, lots of people in fact, who have been exactly there and down close enough to that, to make this book a hit movie at the very least. Try again with a reviewer who's lived under a few bridges, who's harvested a little bud himself, who hasn't been greenhouse raised, and see if the prognosis improves. Harrison's review deprives too many readers of one of the most unusual and enjoyable reads in years.
Yours truly,
Ernest Buckler
Lucy Harrison responds:
Mr. Buckler's reaction to Castling was very different from my own. I was not entirely critical of the book, and did enjoy some parts of it. However, for me, the good was outweighed by the bad. As a writer, I may be less tolerant of wooden prose, cardboard characterization, and the highly creative use of ellipses than Mr. Buckler. As a reviewer, I can only give my reaction to the book; I can't worry about whether others would agree. My opinion was that the book did not work. Mr. Buckler may not agree, but that doesn't make my own, less positive reaction to it any less legitimate.
However, I take issue with Mr. Buckler's opinion that if I were more similar to the characters in the book, I would understand it better. I will point out that as Mr. Buckler has never met me, any assumptions he makes about my background are just that—assumptions. More to the point, my own background is totally irrelevant. In the several thousand books I've read so far in my life, I've been introduced to characters who are thieves, murderers, con-artists, drug-addicts, and rapists. I've met wandering rabbits, prehistoric cave dwellers, aliens, robots, swashbucklers, Victorian scientists, Civil War heroes, quadriplegics, and death-row inmates. I've never been any of those things, except perhaps a con-artist, which all writers are in part. But that hasn't stopped me from understanding these characters, from empathizing with them, from crying and laughing and falling in love along with them. I don't have to have anything in common with them; good writing takes care of that.
Harry Crews, who I mentioned in my initial review, taught me a valuable lesson about this very issue. I once wrote a story for his class that was based on an actual event that had happened to me. Much of the story was a line-for-line reproduction of something out of my own life. That story earned me my lowest grade of the class. Nobody believed it. Nobody thought it would actually happen like that. I went up to Harry later and told him that in fact the story was true, that it had happened exactly as I had written it. He said something like: "If it doesn't work on the page, it doesn't matter whether it's true or not in real life. It ain't true on paper." So if I don't believe the characters and situations in Castling, it's not because I don't have the right experience to do so. It's because the author failed to make me believe.
. . .
The editors reserve the right to revise letters for clarity and brevity.
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