Evergreen Review Reader

Robert or I'm on books in the news. A quick look at a newly published material and books of current

interest.

Your host Robert our own director for public services at the University of Illinois Library

of the Evergreen Review reader a 10 year anthology published by Grove crest

must indeed have been puzzling to anyone who is not familiar with the magazine the Evergreen Review and

save the pieces chosen by Barney Rosset for this anthology there is nothing except the dust jacket. Tell the

reader anything at all. The reader has to go to the tracker to find out the lack of an

introduction or preference was in the publisher's words a willful omission of action there must have been to

my unit in this matter since the dust jacket sneaks in quite a bit of information including the old

bromide that it is difficult for any publication to be truly provocative or stimulating without at

the same time irritating some well that is a bromide he's proven by the Evergreen Review reader

which has surely enough to provoke a stimulating irritate anyone who has the strength to pick up its

800 pages. This is the reader's reign croutons arranged chronologically the best way to

begin is to discuss its first year which apparently was his high point 1957 as one

hundred and forty pages in The Reader. 1058 has 72 when there's a waxing and waning

process up through 1967 which Wayne with a token 20 pages seven of which are

devoted to a comic strip albeit that particular comic strip is from the French strip called

Barbarella. The same Barbarella which I Jane Fonda doing her thing in the movie. What does the

number of pages in one year reflect diminish in importance where with all the thesis sized commentary I can't

report except in my casual reading of the review recently says yes but let's go back

to the book in hand and that first issue was one Samuel Beckett with a piece called

Dante and the lobster and reading it remind you on the back it was James Joyce Secretary

there's a sensitive James pretty short story which must have seen the far fetched 9000 system in

1957 since it was about the disturbance which a young man's beard caused to his

parents. Well pretty much always been extensive the point of being precious but here he seems splendidly

polished so long article called after Budapest by John Bull Shark which

shark wraps the Soviet knuckles for the then new Hungary and occupation it was then

a strange posture from their short form a sure shot. The French were popular

that year there was a long article on capital punishment called Reflections on the guillotine which had just been

published in France and remains one of the most eloquent pieces they said were just good

points were also big that year there was a series of poems by Lawrence from Getty and the

first nun pamphlet publication of Allen Ginsberg's Howl which begins I

saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness starving hysterical

naked. A line Indeed indeed a plant which might best typified the mood of the Evergreen

Review as well as the San Francisco poets. Surprisingly there is a nice pleasant

and bearded picture of Mr. Ginsburg in 1066 or Mr. Ginsburg in a rather bitter

point of one page called the killing of the maid and this time there are two silhouettes Mr. Ginsburg

naked except for tennis shoes but from what I can tell just at present looking. The editors

carefully included throughout the years a selection of cartoons some intended to be funny and some tend to be just fillers

almost all of them seemed very dull indeed. They were like those that used to fill Punch magazine of some

20 years ago only slightly more risque much of the cartoon material indeed is in European

origin 1958 so the appearance of a section of a city of night or

the passages of the teen missed in the book a mistake the editors would never have made 10 years later. In

1960 Terry Southern had a piece of red dirt marijuana which was not published until

very recently and William Burroughs pops up frequently after a 1060 which probably shows the

magazine was going for more for more local color and 1961. I did see the

publication of at the shrinkers Babi Yar which Shostakovich set to music and got both of them in

trouble. Literature the literature of this later period is not noted for its humor unless it was a black

robot robber go over $100 mis understanding got its first partial publication here and has to go

original work which is black in both senses of the word. The Evergreen Review is it was

as mixed a medium as it could be on paper. So there are several a socially

oriented photographic essays and other photographs including some of the arty ones from Evergreen Review

number thirty two which got nabbed a sensor someplace and became famous. The reader I

think is really a very good makes very good reading of that Fayose review of the extremism of the recent

issues.

The Evergreen Review reader published by Grove Press books in

the news is prepared and presented by Robert Oram and sponsored by the Illinois State Library.

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