THE CRITICAL FLAME :: Issue 19, May 2012

Volume 3, Issue 19 | May-June 2012

on fiction

Jillian Saucier on Franz Werfel's The Forty Days of Musa Dagh

"The Forty Days of Musa Dagh was among the first books to articulate the biomedical ideology that lay behind systematic genocide, sparking controversy within the contemporary German and Turkish governments. It was a watershed work of literature, and foreshadowed the horrific final solution of Nazi Germany."

Lindsey Gilbert on Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station

"In Leaving the Atocha Station, Lerner wants to replicate 'the texture of et cetera,' to inhabit the white noise that accounts for the bulk of experience. Life does not coalesce around just a few Important Moments, he insists, and novels should not, either."

on nonfiction

Scott Esposito on The Lifespan of a Fact

"The book challenges us with difficult questions about what we know, what is a fact, and how we know the truth. D'Agata pits his lonely voice against the commonly accepted norms of fact to which most of us adhere, compulsively, all through our daily lives."

Francie Noyes on Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty

"On their own, the Communist membership, the difficulty with her parental role, the sloppy dress and rough tongue are not themselves notable. They simply make Neel the kooky lady down the street. It is the art that makes her worth a study of this magnitude."

on verse

Henry Gould on the poetry of Stuart Blazer

"Stuart Blazer's poetry is natural in the sense of establishing a comfortable synthesis, a lively ambience of poem (word) and world (home)."

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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.

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