The Angels of Catastrophe Peter Plate (Seve Stories Press) At it’s weakest, noir is only about fashion. It’s about style. It’s a sublimated designer’s urge transferred and resurfacing through a guise of machismo. The setup? A good guy looking for a bad guy, trying to solve a crime or a string or crimes in any […]
Monica Drake
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In the City of Shy Hunters
Book Review
In the City of Shy Hunters Tom Spanbauer (Grove Press) Tom Spanbauer is an amazing man. He’s an incredible teacher and writer. We’re lucky to have him, living here in town. When he first moved to Portland, over a decade ago, I took one of his initial writing workshops. There were only about six of […]
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The World of Normal Boys
Book Review
The World of Normal Boys Karl Soehnlein (Kensington) It’s award time again! This year’s round of Lambda Literary Award winners (a national award for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered oriented writing) was announced May 31. Portland’s own Judith Barrington came in first in lesbian nonfiction for her autobiography, Lifesaving. Barrington recently celebrated her 25th anniversary […]
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Pastoralia: Stories
Book Reviews
Pastoralia: Stories George Saunders (Riverhead Books) Poor old Hobbes, that social contract theorist, spoke out of fear and an unfortunate truth, too, when he said the life of man is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Hobbes was pleading for a unified front against the evils of individual, misinformed choices and the possibility of civil […]
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Taking Back the Night
When it Comes to Sex Workers’ Rights, Portland Can Learn a Lot from South Africa
Prostitution is a business based in fantasy, equal parts cash and props, and a little fun, right? Makeup is all illusion, and why should it matter if those breasts are real? A thigh is a thigh, whether the girl really likes you or not, or whether you’d actually like her in other cirumstances, in that […]
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Choke
Book Review
Choke Chuck Palahniuk (Doubleday) Broadway Books, 284-1726 Tuesday, May 29 This week, Portland’s literary star and Mercury‘s own contributor, Chuck Palahniuk, unveils his latest novel, Choke. For ten years, I’ve been writing alongside Palahniuk, thrilled with his sentences, his quick moves, his ideas. Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, Survivor–they’ve all shown Palahniuk’s ability to spin a […]
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CafÉ Lena
Café Lena 2239 SE Hawthorne, 238-7087 To celebrate the 10th anniversary of this “restaurant for all the senses,” Café Lena has a revamped menu, introducing a “four course feast.” Serving in courses implies leisure and indulgence–the entrée shouldn’t arrive before the salad is finished, before the soup bowl is off the table. By dessert, customers […]
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Eco Wake-Up Call
Joy Williams and her Ill Nature
Hey, you anarchists and agitators, environmentalists, capitalist, cops, Buddhists, and urban planners–get out your pencils, your bookmarks. I’m giving you, specifically, a reading assignment: Ill Nature, by Joy Williams. And all of you who love long walks on the beach, who step over plastics, beer cans, and dead seagulls, who utilize curbside recycling as a […]
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Child-Like Detail
Tony Earley Grows Up With the Tube
Tony Earley Powell’s City of Books Thurs May 3, 7:30 pm I imagine callingmy childhood phone number to see if anyone answers. The phone number is among my earliest memories, tied to an address of a house long since razed, acres of land turned into parking lots and businesses. Every apple tree, willow, and morning […]
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Twenty-Nine Cent Hamburger
Everyone Has a Price; Especially When Starving
Twenty-nine cents for a hamburger? A person could feed a nation! A thirty-nine-cent cheeseburger? It’s insane! Sundays and Wednesdays. I couldn’t wait for these days to come around. Holding 60 cents in my hand, two quarters and a dime, standing in line, knowing exactly what to order. For years I lived almost next door to […]
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Marbles in My Underpants
Marbles in My Underpants Renee French (Oni Press) Truth, beauty, and depravity must all share the same frame. I read that somewhere. I wrote it down as a note to myself: the goal of emotionally rich art. Marbles in My Underpants, the collected work of comic artist Renee French, does exactly that–puts truth, beauty, and […]
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LOTERIA
Book Review
Loteria Cards and Fortune Poems: A Book of Lives Poems by Juan Felipe Herrera (City Lights Books) La Botella: 100 proof mata perro, street-killdog./100 proof skull in the toilet bowl, the glass, I mean/excuse me. 100 proof/devil on my left shoulder, the spice./100 proof, Mr. Chicago Club/conch-eyed sombrero Good-Bar/100 proof gypsy sequence film, the Venus […]