In early 2010, film critic Robert Ebert declared tendentiously that videogames “could never be art.” Among the torrent of gamers outraged by this comment, Chris Bateman – author, philosopher, and game designer – rose to the occasion with this lucid and compelling defense of gaming. In Imaginary Games, Bateman does more than refute Ebert’s claim; he leads us through a systematic and multifaceted exploration of the historical, philosophical, social, and neurocognitive bases for gaming. In the process, he suggests not only that games and art have more commonalities than differences, but that gaming also constitutes the ineluctable fabric of our very lives. READ MORE

Imaginary Games A philosophical investigation of play and imaginary things by Chris Bateman zerO Books, 2011 321 pages Reviewed by Allen Zhang

The Ellington Century is not a biography of Duke Ellington. It is not a history of jazz. It is something altogether more ambitious: an attempt at a wholesale reorientation of the way we think about twentieth-century music. Traditional musicology proceeds largely under the assumption that genres (“classical music,” “popular music,” jazz, not to mention non-Western musics) exist in different worlds, each treated as if separate from the others. When jazz figures in studies of Western art music — as it often does in discussions of composers like Ravel or Milhaud — it is generally acknowledged only as an authorless, undifferentiated flavouring. Surveys of modernism are particularly afflicted with this malaise. Though many of modernism’s most canonical figures resided for much of their lives in America, including Schoenberg (a long-time tennis partner to George Gershwin) and Stravinsky, scholars tend to approach them from a staunchly European perspective. Ellington, though far from the only composer discussed in the book, functions here as a lens through which to view the twentieth century from a new perspective, and, ultimately, as a means of forging a new conception of ‘modern music’. READ MORE

The Ellington Century A work of music criticism by David Schiff University of California Press, 2012 336 pages Reviewed by Caroline Waight

Frank O’Connor (1903 – 1966) is famous principally, perhaps, as the last major light of the Irish Renaissance, a literary movement of the latter 19th and earlier 20th centuries, inspired by nationalism and the revival of traditional and folk heritages. He got his start, as so many of his Renaissance writers did, as a poet and translator of Irish medieval literature. At the peak of his career he was managing director of Yeats’s Abbey Theatre in Dublin, and John F. Kennedy even referenced him in a speech. But, as Russell Banks notes in his introduction here, by 1961 O’Connor was already in his sixties and had long ago fallen “off the bus” that the young writers of the time had packed themselves onto. And yet, he delivered in that year a series of lectures at Stanford University on the nature of the short story which evolved first into a campus, and then literary, worldwide sensation (among his attendees sat the likes of Ken Kesey, Larry McMurtry, and Robert Stone). The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story, first published in 1963, is comprised of the contents of these lectures. READ MORE

The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story A work of literary criticism by Frank O’Connor Melville House, 2004 211 pages Reviewed by Claire Shefchik

Wagner is a problem. Adored, despised, mocked and emulated, he is one of the most controversial artists of the last two hundred years. From Hitler to Woody Allen, everyone has an opinion. His influence in the twentieth century is everywhere to be found, even — or perhaps especially — where it is most emphatically disowned; hence, though The Total Work of Art in European Modernism does not focus solely, or even primarily, on Wagner, his presence is felt throughout. The notion of a ‘total work of art’ — or Gesamtkunstwerk, in German — is closely associated with him (indeed, he coined the term), and it functions as a unifying thread that runs throughout the book. In this, David Roberts is not alone. He is one of a number of contemporary scholars to identify the Gesamtkunstwerk as a pivotal concept in twentieth century culture: Matthew Wilson Smith’s The Total Work of Art: From Bayreuth to Cyberspace (2007) and Juliet Koss’s Modernism after Wagner (2009) are both premised on this idea. Their project, like Roberts’, is to navigate Wagner’s complex and often troubling legacy, using the idea of the total work of art as a compass. READ MORE

The Total Work of Art in European Modernism A work of art criticism by David Roberts Cornell University Press, 2011 304 pages Reviewed by Caroline Waight

Outside of Argentina, Macedonio Fernandez (1874 – 1952) is famous principally for his role as mentor to Jorge Luis Borges (1899 – 1986). Fernandez, a generation older than Borges, was born into wealth, and studied law with Borges’ father, with whom he became close friends. Both were anarchists, and both were interested in the philosophies of Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and especially William James. The younger Borges completed his education in Switzerland in 1921 and returned to Argentina an impressionable, upstart Imagist poet. Once back, he resumed his friendship with Fernandez. Fernandez was a paradoxical figure, notoriously hermetic and yet a famed conversationalist. With Borges’ support he positioned himself in opposition to the resident establishment modernist figure of Leopoldo Lugones and assumed the role of figurehead of an entire generation of Argentinian writers. He even, with the support of his literary acolytes, waged two quixotic campaigns for the Argentinian presidency. In the late 20s, however, Borges changed tack: he renounced much of his previous output, and began to deny the quality and importance of Fernandez’s work, and its influence on his own mature works. Throughout his life Fernandez had published infrequently and reluctantly, and with the withdrawal of Borges support Fernandez largely slipped through the fingers of the critical establishment for decades. Lately, however, there has been a critical reevaluation. Fernandez’s writings, after all, display many of the dominant traits that came to define Borges’ works, and it was in Fernandez’s company that Borges grew into maturity as a writer. This, the first English language translation of Fernandez’s masterpiece, The Museum of Eterna’s Novel, is an event of considerable importance. READ MORE

The Museum of Eterna’s Novel (the First Good Novel) A novel by Macedonio Fernandez Open Letter, 2010 (first published 1967) 238 pages Reviewed by Mark Molloy

It’s tempting to talk about Michael Dickman’s life.

For starters, he seems to be writing about it—and the details are so dementedly disturbing, and his tone so disturbingly straightforward, that even the most courteous reader can’t help rubbernecking, and even the most hardened can’t help hoping that these are persona poems. If his poems beg to be fact-checked, in other words, it’s not because Dickman doesn’t seem trustworthy. READ MORE

The End of the West A collection of poems by Michael Dickman Copper Canyon Press, 2009 96 pages Reviewed by Ali Shapiro

There should be nothing surprising about the title of Bill Luoma’s recent collection of poetry, Some Math. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a more perfect title for a volume of poetry published during an era preoccupied with quantitative analytics and bottom lines. But, for the aficionado of avant-garde poetry, the delicious twist of Luoma’s title is that, in Some Math, language is alive and quite well in its state of play. In fact, this book—which is hardly the volume of story problems or word algebra its title suggests—might be thought of as instead a meditation on the messy scene of poetic genesis: the simple, sometime senseless pleasures of the word. Some Math is a paradox: it often feels like a temporally misplaced work of high modernism, even as its allusions are drawn from the recesses and abscesses of twenty-first-century culture. Its many aesthetic contradictions, however, and more importantly Luoma’s willingness to persist amid them, are the engines of its success. READ MORE

Some Math A Collection of Poetry by Bill Luoma Kenning Editions, 2011 136 pages Reviewed by Kevin C. Moore

Victoria Donda, the author and subject of My Name is Victoria, is the daughter of two activists who were kidnapped and murdered by government forces during Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship. Known in Argentina as the “Last Military Dictatorship,” this regime was the most brutal of a series of military and authoritarian governments that led Argentina in the later half of the 20th century. Donda was born during her parents’ captivity and given to a conservative family who supported the regime, a fate 500 other Argentine babies shared. The family raised her as their own daughter, re-named Analía. Though she always had an inexplicable fondness for the name “Victoria,” Victoria Donda didn’t learn of her real family or identity until 2003. An association of grandmothers of disappeared children, the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo (an offshoot of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) contacted her after a long investigation. After a photo comparison and, later, a DNA test, the results were undeniable. Donda is now a human rights activist and a legislator in the Argentine National Congress. READ MORE

My Name is Victoria: The Extraordinary Story of One Woman’s Struggle to Reclaim her True Identity A memoir by Victoria Donda Translated from the Spanish by Magda Bodin Other Press, 2011 237 pages Reviewed by Erin Becker

“Each individual has an idealized version of the self which they would prefer to offer to the world at large, and with the aid of a mirror, this publicly visible façade can be carefully constructed.” The mirror, once a symbol of the Virgin Mary, now perhaps predominantly a tool – or weapon – of self-portraiture and self-interrogation, Ribeiro writes, “stands for good and evil; for sacred and for profane; for the spiritual and the worldly.” As recently as the seventeenth century, the mirror became a household necessity in Europe, taking center stage in the process in the history of cosmetics. Which is where our story begins. READ MORE

Facing Beauty: Painted Women & Cosmetic Art A critical analysis of concepts of female beauty by Aileen Ribeiro Yale University Press, 2011 371 pages Reviewed by Stephanie M. Barner

The BBC Radiophonic Workshop is obsolete. Visits to the Broadcasting Corporation’s Maida Vale Studios in West London scarcely reveal a groundbreaking electronic music factory these days. Rather, since 1999, when reel-to-reel tape recorders, analogue synthesizers and voltage-control amplifiers were replaced by chic suede armchairs, projector screens and coloured uplighting, the Workshop’s historic site has survived in a new guise: it is now the main recording studio for BBC television’s live weekly film review show. The advent of the personal computer and the increased availability of inexpensive but high quality digital recorders in the last decades of the twentieth century brought to an end the then unprofitable Radiophonic Workshop after some forty years of service to British broadcasts. Louis Niebur, however, in Special Sound, ultimately stresses the insignificance of the physical Workshop’s disappearance. For Niebur, the Radiophonic Workshop continues to survive, no longer in rooms 11 and 12 at Maida Vale admittedly, but in the sounds and semiotics of the multiplicity of electronic musics that have since spawned in its wake and influence. In Special Sound Niebur distinguishes the Radiophonic Workshop from simultaneous developments in music across Europe and America and positions it at the forefront of a uniquely British populist modernism. READ MORE

Special Sound: The Creation and Legacy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop A work of music criticism by Louis Niebur Oxford University Press, 2010 259 pages Reviewed by Angela Moran

September 16th, 1955. A violent military coup ousts the repressive Peronist government and ushers in a new chapter in Argentine history. Although it ended a decade of censorship and political imprisonment, the ejection of Perón’s populist regime also struck a blow against a newly awakened national consciousness. Those hit hardest by Perón’s downfall were the working class, who for years thrived under Peronist policies of trade unionization, nationalization, and urban development. For them, the coup in the Plaza de Mayo not only signified a new age of political and economic uncertainty, but also a crisis in their nascent national identity. READ MORE

Scars A novel by Juan José Saer Translated from the Spanish by Steve Dolph Open Letter, 2011 278 pages Reviewed by Allen Zhang

In the world of poetry, the links between readership and long-term influence have always been tenuous. This is particularly true of the long poems of American modernism—such as Ezra Pound’s Cantos and William Carlos Williams’ Paterson—which may be referenced more frequently than read. Yet few poems have seen as great a disparity in influence and readership as Louis Zukofsky’s masterwork, “A.” In his own time, Zukofsky was credited with spearheading the “Objectivist” movement in poetry, which included writers such as William Carlos Williams, Charles Reznikoff and Kenneth Rexroth. Since then he’s been labeled a forebear of the language poets, and writers as diverse as Robert Creeley, Lorine Niedecker, Ron Silliman and Charles Bernstein have named him as a major influence. Yet “A,” which Zukofsky wrote from 1928 until 1973, has fallen out of print twice since its posthumous publication in 1978. Pound critic Hugh Kenner has called it “the most hermetic poem in English,” and Zukofsky himself has been described as “a poet’s poet’s poet.” In the past few years, even those readers who are undeterred by such warnings have had little chance to test their veracity. John Hopkins University Press took it off their list in 2006, and lately the book has been hard to come by. Only now, with the release of a new edition from New Directions, (which is famous for keeping its books in print) has “A” has finally found itself a permanent home. READ MORE

“A” A collection of poems by Louis Zukofsky New Directions, 2011 846 pages Reviewed by Mary Wilson

What do we think of when we pass cows grazing out along the highway, if we think anything of them at all? Perhaps we think there is something incomprehensibly dull about them—or stubbornly languid. They are fixtures of the landscape become that landscape. Their nearly inanimate bodies seem like bales of hay or rocks or trees; their consciousnesses may seem as removed. They are, as Lydia Davis reveals in The Cows, unknowable others onto which we project so much that is human. And yet, Davis asks: are we not, ourselves, unknowable others? Do we not, as the cows seem to, inhabit our own selves just as mysteriously, if perhaps somewhat less completely? READ MORE

The Cows A prose observation of three cows by Lydia Davis Sarabande Books, 2011 37 pages Reviewed by Ann Marie Thornburg

If the recent Walter Isaacson biography of the late Steve Jobs has a companion volume in the world of fiction, Helen DeWitt’s new novel Lightning Rods may be it. ,em>Lightning Rods is, ultimately, an account of business genius: specifically, of the bold, inventive product-vision that so transformed American culture in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The key events of the novel take place at the turn of the millennium, but the novel is narrated from the present by a nameless observer. As the narrator tracks a remarkable sequence of epiphanies experienced by protagonist “Joe,” we learn the history of human resources firm Lightning Rods, Inc., which markets and places “bifunctional” female staff willing to perform regular secretarial and administrative duties as well as earn substantial additional income by participating in a kind of anonymous, computer-facilitated sexual roulette in their workplaces. The system works like this: a few times a day, a female “lightning rod” will be paired anonymously with one of the male staff members by a message that appears on the computer screens of both parties. If the male employee elects to pursue the lightning rod’s services, which is entirely voluntary, both participants separately make their way to specially modified disabled stalls in the men’s and women’s bathrooms. The back half of the female participant then passes backward through a hole in the wall between the gendered bathrooms on a “transporter,” and the male staff member, equipped in the stall with condoms and lubricant, can enjoy a few moments of no-strings-attached ventro-dorsal intercourse on the company dime in the name of collective productivity. Designed to help corporations avoid disruptive sexual harassment lawsuits, Lightning Rods, Inc. is wildly successful. READ MORE

Lightning Rods A Novel by Helen DeWitt New Directions, 2011 275pages Reviewed by Kevin C. Moore

Rob Young, editor of English music mag The Wire, has given us a half maddening, half masterpiece of a book on the history of English folk. Beginning with the Victorian writer William Morris (1834 – 1896), who sought to escape the industrial wasteland by idealizing the Middle Ages, and ending with post-punk anarcho-futurist and folk paganist Julian Cope, Young’s book works as a series of chapters that don’t quite cohere into a larger thesis. And yet this isn’t necessarily a shortcoming; Young has picked a discursive subject. He educates slowly and forcefully over 600 pages and follows his subject down whatever path it might wander, overwhelming in scale though the task may be. READ MORE

Electric Eden A work of music criticism by Rob Young Faber & Faber, 2010 672 pages Reviewed by Devin King

What makes us want to get high? And once we do – what next? One part addiction memoir, one part survey of the history and state of the science of psychedelia, Peter Bebergal’s Too Much to Dream takes a roundabout voyage toward an answer to these questions, on its way covering everything from the psychedelic writings of Aldous Huxley, Carlos Castaneda and Timothy Leary, to the rec-room pseudo-magicianry of The Lord of the Rings, Silver Surfer comics, and Dungeons & Dragons. But Too Much to Dream is no more a work of geek nostalgia than one of narcotic pedantry. They’re never just what Too Much to Dream is all about, in the way that, to Bebergal, getting high is never just what taking drugs is all about. READ MORE

Too Much to Dream: A Psychedelic American Boyhood A memoir by Peter Bebergal Soft Skull Press, 2011 232 pages Reviewed by Claire Shefchik

Born in a generation of writers that included the Nobel Prize winners Czeslaw Milosz and Wislawa Szymborska, Tadeusz Rozewicz (1921—) has been known as one of the darkest and most experimental voices of post-war Polish poetry. Sobbing Superpower, translated by Joanna Trzeciak, is the first extensive selection of his poetry to appear in English, and the only one that attempts to span the entity of Rozewicz’s poetic development. READ MORE

Sobbing Superpower: Selected Poems A selection of poems by Tadeusz Rozewicz Translated by Joanna Trzeciak W.W. Norton & Company, 2011 364 pages Reviewed by Marta Figlerowicz

Modern Poetry of Pakistan is a new collection of contemporary poetry translated from Urdu, Panjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, Balochi, Seraiki, and Kashmiri – the seven major languages of Pakistan. This is an important anthology because it is the first to bring as many vernacular poets in translation in a single volume. It successfully complements the representative breadth of its selections with the depth of the poetic experience that it offers. READ MORE

Modern Poetry of Pakistan Selected by Iftikar Arif Translations Edited by Waqas Khwaja Dalkey Archive Press, first published 2010 298 pages Reviewed by Anannya Dasgupta

Over the past decade, American poetry may have been luckiest in the patience and devotion of its editors. Writers whose receptions have been limited to regional or aesthetic camps, who have been called poets’ poets, or who have simply faded from view, are suddenly once more in our hands, in collected editions such as Jack Spicer’s My Vocabulary Did This to Me or Jackson Mac Low’s Thing of Beauty. In 2012 we can expect an edition of Joe Ceravolo’s poetry from Wesleyan. This year, David Trinidad has given us the poetry of Tim Dlugos in a remarkable act of service, bringing together all of the work that the poet published in his lifetime as well as much previously unpublished. The resulting volume is an unexpected pleasure and a testament to artistic perseverance. READ MORE

A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos Edited by David Trinidad A collection of poems by Tim Dlugos Nightboat Books, 2011 632 pages Reviewed by Justin Sider

W. K. Wimsatt, the New Formalist critic, opened his famous essay, “What to Say About a Poem,” with an assumption Sandra Doller’s newest book of poetry seems positioned directly against. Wimsatt wrote, “At the outset what can we be sure of? Mainly that a poem says or means something, or ought to mean something.” In Man Years, “meaning” is poetry’s predetermined enemy. With a sensibility influenced by the Language poetries of Rae Armantrout — who writes in praise of Doller’s “pinball wizard” deftness on the book’s back cover — and Charles Bernstein, Doller writes poems as syntactically liberated as they are emotionally arrested, as theoretically serious as they are slap-stick silly. Because the voices and attentions of this book are not of a single, placid mind, there is no point in pursuing a reading of it that would culminate in a single, placid meaning. Doller is a champion of the untidy, of the disorderly universe we would encounter daily if we dared to look hard enough. READ MORE

Man Years A Collection of Poems by Sandra Doller Subito Press, 2011 87 pages Reviewed by Robert Whitehead

If the protestors of the Occupy movement ever decide to nominate a poet laureate, writer and translator Daniel Borzutzky would certainly make a compelling candidate. A writer and translator of Chilean descent who lives and teaches in Chicago, Borzutzky’s latest volume The Book of Interfering Bodies—his third book after Arbitrary Tales (2005) and The Ecstasy of Capitulation (2006), which are, respectively, collections of fiction and poetry—is very timely, and it constitutes his most ambitious and unified project to date. To be clear, the brand of ironic subversion Borzutzky invents in his latest volume probably doesn’t resemble the present populist resistance as it is usually formulated. Rather, in this new book on the fate of the human imagination in the postindustrial West, Borzutzky writes what might be called bureaucratically occupied poetry. READ MORE

The Book of Interfering Bodies A Collection of Poems by Daniel Borzutzky Nightboat Books, 2011 103 pages Reviewed by Kevin C. Moore