The Collected and Ephemeral Works of   Paulina Borsook      Fessenden Review notes

This is one of many many reviews/essays I wrote for Fessenden Review, a wonderful wacked magazine from the 1980s put together by community-radio pioneer/disability activist Lorenzo Milam and Doug Cruikshank (wunderbar writer + editor, even at salon.com for awhile). Other Fessdenden reviews/essays not available on this website include:

disses of

• 80s flava-of-the-week outre literary girl Jayne Anne Phillips
• an irredemiably bad feminist (in the worst sense) would-be Rabelaisian novel, Biggest Modern Woman of the World
• a distressingly chick-lit historical novel about Phillis Wheatley, a Colonial-era African-American poetess
• a collection of short stories by Carol Bly, Robert Bly's ex, which calls attention to the unfortunate tendency she shares with William Trevor of having characters speechify

props to

• Unwinding the Vietnam War: from war into peace, an excellent anthology of should-be-better-known writings about that war and time
• two books by James Houston, one an autobiographical reflection on the men in his life; the other a novel about a jazz piano-player. Sweet man, nice stuff.