The Georgia Review – Fall/Winter 2006

Sixtieth Anniversary Congratulations to the editors and staff of The Georgia Review, long acclaimed as the best of the best. Correspondence—letters—beginning with the journal’s 1947-1976 archives (1977-2000 items to appear in Spring 2007) is the theme of this double issue of nearly 400 pages, perhaps in the hope aid and comfort for today’s writers would emerge (as it has: cover letters should self-destruct; also personal papers upon the writer’s death, if not before). Much has been made of the loss of the art of personal letter writing since the advent of e-mail, but Hugh Ruppersberg’s review of Selected Letters of Robert Penn Warren offers insight regarding letters by literary figures: “Writers tend to reserve their intellect and energy for their creative efforts . . .”

Sixtieth Anniversary Congratulations to the editors and staff of The Georgia Review, long acclaimed as the best of the best. Correspondence—letters—beginning with the journal’s 1947-1976 archives (1977-2000 items to appear in Spring 2007) is the theme of this double issue of nearly 400 pages, perhaps in the hope aid and comfort for today’s writers would emerge (as it has: cover letters should self-destruct; also personal papers upon the writer’s death, if not before). Much has been made of the loss of the art of personal letter writing since the advent of e-mail, but Hugh Ruppersberg’s review of Selected Letters of Robert Penn Warren offers insight regarding letters by literary figures: “Writers tend to reserve their intellect and energy for their creative efforts . . .” Also difficult to imagine: GR‘s early solicitations, when not ignored, were often dismissed. The letter-based essays, poems, and fictions in this issue were readily submitted you can be sure, and the excellent essayist David Bosworth continues, sans letters, his discontent with the direction of our lives in “Conscientious Thinking,” a virtual brief of western literature and philosophy. Invasion of privacy occurs to the reader long before the author mentions the concept in Michael Donohue’s grim essay “Russell and Mary.” Essays and book reviews, always GR‘s crowning glory, include Judith Kitchen on several subjects, including The Letters of Robert Lowell and Edward Butscher’s detailed reviews of recent fiction and non-fiction anthologies. The collection, Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Promising Medium, is reviewed by Louis Phillips, and I, also, regret the omission of contemporary items, particularly Art Spigelman’s astonishing Maus. Among other interesting items are essay/reviews on New York writers, Wisconsin fiction, and American theatre.
[thegeorgiareview.com]