Home » Newpages Blog » The Threepenny Review – Summer 2003

The Threepenny Review – Summer 2003

Number 94

Summer 2003

Devon Ellington

The contributors of this highly-regarded publication hail from all over the world, but the sensibility is very much of its place of origin, Berkeley, CA. The sense of place and identity are pervasive.

The contributors of this highly-regarded publication hail from all over the world, but the sensibility is very much of its place of origin, Berkeley, CA. The sense of place and identity are pervasive.

The publication mixes poetry and fiction with heavy emphasis on essays and opinion pieces. Particularly engaging are: Janna Malamud Smith’s memoir “My Father is a Book” (about her father, Bernard Malamud); Bryn Canner’s “The Extracurricular Life of Poetry”; Isabel Colgate’s reflection on her novel, “The Shooting Party  Revisited”; and “A Symposium on Buddenbrooks”. The latter is a series of short pieces by different writers about Thomas Mann’s novel Buddenbrooks. They are thoughtful and intriguing enough to send me in search of this novel I’ve never read. The two articles on theatre and film (“Human Voices” by Steve Vineberg about the film The Becket Plays, and “The Fan” by Lynn Sharon Schwartz about the film Stone Reader) are on the long side if you aren’t interested in the subject matter, but wonderfully in-depth if you are. Judith Aronson’s black and white portraits of writers are beautiful.

Overall, The Threepenny Review is a good journal to sit down with when you need a few hours of intellectual stimulation. [The Threepenny Review, P.O. Box 9131, Berkeley, CA 94709. E-mail: [email protected]. Single issue $7.00. www.threepennyreview.com]DE

Spread the word!