Tin House – Fall 2008

This is the “political issue,” which I am reading just prior to the election, and I am, paradoxically, glad, almost relieved to find the sad ironies (The title page quotes John F. Kennedy, “The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war”), popular truths (the Editor’s Note begins with the old bumper sticker adage, “If you’re not pissed off, you’re not paying attention.”), and delighted to find that Tin House is as provocative as ever, especially when we need it most.

This is the “political issue,” which I am reading just prior to the election, and I am, paradoxically, glad, almost relieved to find the sad ironies (The title page quotes John F. Kennedy, “The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war”), popular truths (the Editor’s Note begins with the old bumper sticker adage, “If you’re not pissed off, you’re not paying attention.”), and delighted to find that Tin House is as provocative as ever, especially when we need it most.

I can’t possibly begin to tell you what’s here in a comprehensive way, this is an enormous issue not only in size, but in ambition: an interview with Thomas Frank on his new book on the impact of conservative governance in America, The Wrecking Crew; poems by Marvin Bell, Kevin Young, Mary Szybist, and Ethan J. Hon; fiction by J. C. Hallman, Christopher Howard, by newcomer Natalie Bakopoulus, and a translation of an excerpt of work by José Saramago; essays by Barry Sanders, Nick Flyn, Francine Prose, Mazen Kerbaj, and many others; two graphic essays; short remarks/reviews of political writing of the past that matters in one way or another now; and a section of responses to three questions (What do you fear most for the future? What gives you hope for the future? Is there a book that captures your political sensibility?) from Dorothy Allision, Steve Almond, John Barth, Charles Baxter, Susan Bell, Pinckney Benedict, Junot Diaz, Lydia Davis, Yiyun Li, Ellen Litman, Michelle Aharonian Marcom, Lydia Milet, Paul Muldoon, Cynthia Ozick, George Saunders, and Lynne Tillman. Francine Prose asks and answers her own questions about political writing in an essay titled, “Out from Under the Cloud of Unknowing.” Political art must be as much about discovery, rather than pontificating or exerting a specific point a view, as art that does not aspire to be political, she concludes.

There is a lot of philosophizing in this issue, but there is, as well, observation of people and trends and beliefs in the United States and around the globe, an analysis of censorship, another of the relationship between sexuality and violence, and throughout the entire issue a commitment to honest assessment of ourselves as individuals, as communities of thinkers, as citizens, as nations, as artists.

In the “Three Questions” segment, Junot Diaz fears that “a true human collective will never emerge.” Paul Muldoon fears that there will be “too much hatred and too little room.” I fear they are both right and hope, if somewhat foolishly, that journals as brilliant as Tin House might somehow keep this from happening.
[www.tinhouse.com/]