The Threepenny Review – Winter 2007

A magazine’s readership can be found in its advertisements. MFA programs listing esteemed writing faculty spot the pages of The Threepenny Review, a quarterly, newspaper-styled arts chronicle. There is a high-brow academic element to the review, but it’s balanced by questioning yet incisive prose.

A magazine’s readership can be found in its advertisements. MFA programs listing esteemed writing faculty spot the pages of The Threepenny Review, a quarterly, newspaper-styled arts chronicle. There is a high-brow academic element to the review, but it’s balanced by questioning yet incisive prose. The symposium in this issue is an intellectual, time-binding tour of Berlin, its art and its denizens. Black and white photographs by Albert Renger-Patzsch and August Sander break up the chunks of prose. “Table Talk,” a conversational recap of the world’s curiosities, is formatted like the “Talk of the Town” section in The New Yorker. That comparison stretches to the end of the Threepenny, where the reviews—ranging from tap dancing to the resurgence of Duma director Carroll Ballard (The Black Stallion), to a review of Thomas Bernhard’s translation Frost, are reviews not only of a piece of art but of a career. In Lydia Kann’s “The Mule that Pulls the Cart,” a husband consults his half-sister before dealing with his past while in therapy with his cold wife, who pleads for “the little things.” “The Epicurean” by Louis B. Jones is built on the theological and philosophical experiences of Candace Roan, who, in her story to our narrator, reveals that she is blessed to be unmoved by passion. In “My First Language,” Bernardo Atxaga recalls growing up learning five languages as his native Basque culture was being steamrolled by modern Spain.
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