THE CRITICAL FLAME :: Issue 8, July 2010

:: Volume 2, Issue 8 | July — August 2010 ::

on nonfiction

Daniel E. Pritchard on Internet Book Reviews

“The internet is a landscape of dilettantes and amateurs, those for whom this literary pursuit is not a career but an avocation. Their opinions may well be unsophisticated, but they are also largely unpretentious, honest, and conversational. They are able to build a trust with their readers that print reviewers somehow lost. And there does exist, beneath the blemishes, some recognizable measure of critical acumen. As Pope wrote, “Most have the seeds of judgment in their mind; / Nature affords at least a glimmering light.” Online book reviewers are the common readers of our age, and, despite their common flaws, they deserve better than widespread derision — particularly from those whose livelihood depends upon them.”

Daniel Wood on Dave Eggar’s Zeitoun

“The prose is not remarkable in any conventional sense. It is clear, muted, and even pedestrian — a world away from the exuberance of Roberto Bolaño, the zing of Don DeLillo, and the lyricism of Ian McEwan — and, for that reason, Zeitoun has attracted a number of offhand dismissals from broadsheet critics. Indeed, even those who have praised the book’s narrative have expressed reservations about the prose, as if its lack of conventional beauty were a side-effect of Dave Eggers’ overstretched workload or, worse, a symptom of his inherently underwhelming literary capabilities.”

on verse

Nora Delaney on Suzanne Buffam’s The Irrationalist

“How didactic our speaker is! Out of context, one might mistake this snippet for some lecture notes from an introductory class on Aristotle. The prose only accentuates the essayistic tone of the collection: utilitarian, distinctly and emphatically unpoetic. The style itself is paradoxical, almost perverse, since so many of the poems consider inexplicable beauty, awe, and wonder. There is a sharp tension between the iron-tool language of the collection and its anti-utilitarian, anti-rationalist themes. Mysticism trumps reason time and again in these didactic prose poems.”

on fiction

Katherine A. Evans on Alain Mabanckou’s Broken Glass

“In some ways, Mabanckou’s novel suffers from this cursory coverage of the canon of world literature from Marquez to Joyce to Tzara and Pasternak, but the sampling of authors also reveals the depth and breadth of Mabanckou’s engagement with writers from across the world. Many of the authors he references, even only in passing, are those who have tackled the challenges of constructing a literary national narrative before him.”

Letters to the Editor

Misspellings? Incorrect dates? Wrongly attributed works? Missing piece of information? Praise? Disagreement?
Send a letter to the editor, at info@criticalflame.org.

Call for Submissions

The Critical Flame is now accepting book review and critical essay submissions on fiction, verse, and non-fiction titles. There are no explicit length requirements or limits, we only ask that essays be a reasonable length for their topic and that an article’s length never exceed its coherence. We have no requirements or quotas for positive or negative reviews, but essays that acknowledge both the flaws and virtues existent in all titles will be given preference over essays whose content are merely laudatory or simply vitriol. Although we seek learned and well-researched essays, please remember that The Critical Flame is not an academic publication and the audience for us, always, is the intelligent reading public.

There seems to be a gap in our culture between the academic and public mind, a certain incongruity of expectation and focus, a certain disdain each for the other. This disjunction is not an impasse, but a challenge to our imaginations, and one we gladly take up; and we hope you'll undertake this project with us.

If you have an idea for a review or essay, but are unsure whether it is appropriate for The Critical Flame, the editors welcome you to send us an email query. We are also happy to contact publishers on behalf of our reviewers. We look forward to hearing from you.

The Editors