The stories and poems chosen for this issue are accessible yet challenging, and many pieces, especially among the fiction, managed to spur my own creative intellect. In fact, the more time I spend with The Greensboro Review, the clearer it becomes that, like the struggling sperm, I have found a place to lodge and grow, and I look forward to the work that GR will publish in the future.

# posted by The Editors @ 8:19 PM  |

"...the refugees who edit and contribute to Backwards City Review guide us into what feels like literary territory without boundaries, writing without borders, with enough wit and grace and in-your-face panache to charm even a stale middle-aged schlub. This magazine is a good read."

# posted by The Editors @ 8:12 PM  |

AVC: You're saying appearances are more important than objective truth?

SC: Absolutely. The whole idea of authority—authoritarian is fine for some people, like people who say "Listen to me, and just don't question, and do what I say, and everything will be fine"—the sort of thing we really started to respond to so well after 9/11. 'Cause we wanted someone to be daddy, to take decisions away from us. I really have a sense of [America's current leaders] doing bad things in our name to protect us, and that was okay. We weren't thrilled with Bush because we thought he was a good guy at that point, we were thrilled with him because we thought that he probably had hired people who would fuck up our enemies, regardless of how they had to do it. That was for us a very good thing, and I can't argue with the validity of that feeling.

But that has been extended to the idea that authoritarian is better than authority. Because authoritarian means there's only one authority, and that authority has got to be the President, has got to be the government, and has got to be his allies. What the right-wing in the United States tries to do is undermine the press. They call the press "liberal," they call the press "biased," not necessarily because it is or because they have problems with the facts of the left—or even because of the bias for the left, because it's hard not to be biased in some way, everyone is always going to enter their editorial opinion—but because a press that has validity is a press that has authority. And as soon as there's any authority to what the press says, you question the authority of the government—it's like the existence of another authority. So that's another part of truthiness. Truthiness is "What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true." It's not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There's not only an emotional quality, but there's a selfish quality.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 1:17 PM  |

It was a case of the blind going to the blind. I was horrified and told her that, of course, I could not perform an abortion. I had heard about some of the drastic medicines given in such cases and I warned her against them. I told her that I could go to prison for doing what she wanted, and I was against such things personally. I probably sounded fierce, for I was afraid someone would find out that she'd been to me with such a request, and I feared even that would get me into trouble.

She left me a great deal more frightened than when she arrived. I had told her that no decent doctor would perform an abortion. And I had scared her pretty badly about using any home devices. Also I'd added a little homily on her 'sins. I should have been shot, but I felt righteous about the whole business. She had some money. She'd been teaching school and saved several hundred dollars and she offered me the whole sum if I would get her out of the jam. I needed the money, but I felt a virtuous glow over turning it down. I was living up to medical ethics. I was being a good citizen and an honorable physician.

So she went away, and I settled back in my empty office and read medical journals and old magazines and treated a few persons who came in with colds and indigestion.

The next day her name leaped at me from the front page of the daily newspaper. Her body had been found on the doorstep of her home, at one o'clock that morning, by her brother as he was returning from a dance. She had shot herself, and she died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 9:27 AM  |

"Sir," said Tirian, when he had greeted all those. "If I have read the chronicles right, there should be another. Has not your Majesty two sisters? Where is Queen Susan?"

"My sister Suan," answered Peter shortly and gravely, "is no longer a friend of Narnia."

"Yes," said Eustace, "and whenever you've tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says 'What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.'"

"Oh Susan!" said Jill, "she interested in nothing now-a-days except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up."

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 7:37 PM  |

I saw into another world and it was worse than this one. It was like I glimpsed Heaven and...and it wasn't Paradise. It was more like Hell.

What if God, or whoever it is, created us to be better than himself? What if God's reality...Heaven, if you like...what if it's so bad that he had to imagine us to help make his life bearable?

What if we're characters and not people?

-Grant Morrison, Animal Man, Issue 19

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 11:21 AM  |

My client, Mr. Wile E. Coyote, a resident of Arizona and contiguous states, does hearby bring suit for damages against the Acme Company, manufacturer and retail distributor of assorted merchandise, incorporated in Delaware and doing business in every state, district, and territory. Mr. Coyote seeks compensation for personal injuries, loss of business income, and mental suffering caused as a direct result of the actions and/or gross negligence of said company, under Title 15 of the United States Code Chapter 47, section 2072, subsection (a), relating to product liability.

Mr. Coyote states that on eighty-five separate occasions, he has purchased of the Acme Company (hereinafter, 'Defendant'), through that company's mail order department, certain products which did cause him bodily injury due to defects in manufacture or improper cautionary labeling. Sales slips made out to Mr. Coyote as proof of purchase are at present in the possession of the Court, marked Exhibit A. Such injuries sustained by Mr. Coyote have temporarily restricted his ability to make a living in the profession of predator. Mr. Coyote is self-employed and thus not eligible for Workmen's Compensation...

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 9:39 AM  |

A Tale of Two Farms: Two farms; Collapses, past and present

A few summers ago I visited two dairy farms, Huls Farm and Gardar Farm, which despite being located thousands of miles apart were still remarkably similar in their strengths and vulnerabilities. Both were by far the largest, most prosperous, most technologically advanced farms in their respective districts. In particular, each was centered around a magnificent state-of-the-art barn for sheltering and milking cows. Those structures, both neatly divided into opposite-facing rows of cow stalls, dwarfed all other barns in the district. Both farms let their cows graze outdoors in lush pastures during the summer, produced their own hay to harvest in the late summer for feeding the cows through the winter, and increased their production of summer fodder and winter hay by irrigating their fields. The two farms were similar in area (a few square miles) and in barn size, Huls barn holding somewhat more cows than Gardar barn (200 vs. 165 cows, respectively). The owners of both farms were viewed as leaders of their respective societies. Both owners were deeply religious. Both farms were located in gorgeous natural settings that attract tourists from afar, with backdrops of high snow-capped mountains drained by streams teaming with fish, and sloping down to a famous river (below Huls Farm) or 3ord (below Gardar Farm).

Those were the shared strengths of the two farms. As for their shared vulnerabilities, both lay in districts economically marginal for dairying, because their high northern latitudes meant a short summer growing season in which to produce pasture grass and hay. Because the climate was thus suboptimal even in good years, compared to dairy farms at lower latitudes, both farms were susceptible to being harmed by climate change, with drought or cold being the main concerns in the districts of Huls Farm or Gardar Farm respectively. Both districts lay far from population centers to which they could market their products, so that transportation costs and hazards placed them at a competitive disadvantage compared to more centrally located districts. The economies of both farms were hostage to forces beyond their owners' control, such as the changing affluence and tastes of their customers and neighbors. On a larger scale, the economies of the countries in which both farms lay rose and fell with the waxing and waning of threats from distant enemy societies.

The biggest difference between Huls Farm and Gardar Farm is in their current status. Huls Farm, a family enterprise owned by five siblings and their spouses in the Bitterroot Valley of the western U.S. state of Montana, is currently prospering, while Ravalli County in which Huls Farm lies boasts one of the highest population growth rates of any American county. Tim, Trudy, and Dan Huls, who are among Huls Farm's owners, personally took me on a tour of their high-tech new barn, and patiently explained to me the attractions and vicissitudes of dairy farming in Montana. It is inconceivable that the United States in general, and Huls Farm in particular, will collapse in the foreseeable future. But Gardar Farm, the former manor farm of the Norse bishop of southwestern Greenland, was abandoned over 500 years ago. Greenland Norse society collapsed completely: its thousands of inhabitants starved to death, were killed in civil unrest or in war against an enemy, or emigrated, until nobody remained alive. While the strongly built stone walls of Gardar barn and nearby Gardar Cathedral are still standing, so that I was able to count the individual cow stalls, there is no owner to tell me today of Gardar's former attractions and vicissitudes. Yet when Gardar Farm and Norse Greenland were at their peak, their decline seemed as inconceivable as does the decline of Huls Farm and the U.S. today.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 12:00 AM  |

Did you find these games appealing from the beginning?
I did. One of the dirty secrets of doing this stuff is that I am such a better writer now than before I did this project.

Why is that?
When you work as a professional novelist, in this day and age, part of what you are encouraged to do—and part of the natural process—is to slowly work down and reach more and more deeply within yourself to find your own authentic vision and slowly get past pastiching what others have done. Pastiche always came easily to me because I read very widely from a pretty young age and enjoyed most kinds of fiction. I could do faux Cormac McCarthy and I could do faux John Carter of Mars. Gradually, as a novelist, you’re encouraged to push down through that and find your authentic voice as a writer.

With AI, we got in over our heads. We underestimated just how hungry the audience was to be entertained and how much we would need to do to entertain them for how long. I ended up getting to a point where, as a writer, I was in a bizarre need-driven zone—to the point where I punched through everything I was as a writer into the much bigger, darker, oil-well deposit of everything I had been as a reader.

I was allowing myself to use all of it—Cormac McCarthy and William Faulkner and Andre Norton and Tolkien and Dashiell Hammett,1984, Little House on the Prairie, everything—because there was a cast of literally scores of characters going in scores of directions—some personal, some political. It was every kind of writing that I had ever imagined or read, let alone done myself: political posters, pamphlets, business websites, personal diaries of 55-year-old women going through relationship agonies, weddings, funerals, demonstrations. It was extraordinarily liberating, in a sense, because there was no time to worry about “Is this tasteful?” You just had to go and keep going.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 10:49 AM  |

Of course, American Idol invites and expects you to side with its judges. But while the show presents the trio as being besieged by an army of the utterly deluded, the reality is absolutely otherwise. Let's do the math. If Ryan Seacrest is to be believed, then something like a hundred thousand people turned up at Soldier Field to throw their hats into the American Idol ring. During the two hour show, we saw no more than 30 in total. At the end of the show, we were told 34 had made it through to the next round in Hollywood, but only a handful of successful auditions were shown on screen. And those that were concentrated almost exclusively on gimmicks rather than talent: the cutesy sisters, the inevitable twins, the fat girl, and the hippy who talks to the animals. There are two pre-audition selection rounds before contestants are allowed to meet the judges. Clearly then, the show's army of "talent" spotters deliberately sent Derek, Crystal and the others crashing and burning onto national television, in the sure and certain knowledge that humiliation means ratings.

I cannot escape the conclusion that with this season's opening episodes, American Idol has completed its sad transformation from an engaging guilty pleasure into a repulsive and immoral spectacle that should be shunned by all right-thinking and self-respecting Americans.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 2:02 PM  |

But your new book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, is not about cathedrals. It's about religious belief, which cannot be dissected in a lab as if it were a disease.

That itself is a scientific claim, and I think it is false. Belief can be explained in much the way that cancer can. I think the time has come to shed our taboo that says, "Oh, let's just tiptoe by this, we don't have to study this." People think they know a lot about religion. But they don't know.

So what can you tell us about God?

Certainly the idea of a God that can answer prayers and whom you can talk to, and who intervenes in the world - that's a hopeless idea. There is no such thing.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 12:54 PM  |

"Ask Multivac."

"You ask Multivac. I dare you. Five dollars says it can't be done."

Adell was just drunk enough to try, just sober enough to be able to phrase the necessary symbols and operations into a question which, in words, might have corresponded to this: Will mankind one day without the net expenditure of energy be able to restore the sun to its full youthfulness even after it had died of old age?

Or maybe it could be put more simply like this: How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?

Multivac fell dead and silent. The slow flashing of lights ceased, the distant sounds of clicking relays ended.

Then, just as the frightened technicians felt they could hold their breath no longer, there was a sudden springing to life of the teletype attached to that portion of Multivac. Five words were printed: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 10:32 AM  |

4. You

Charges: Silently enabling and contributing to the irreversible destruction of your planet. Absolving yourself of your responsibility to do anything about it that your immediate neighbors don't. Assuming that it's normal behavior to spend several hours each day totally inert and staring into a cathode ray tube. Substituting antidepressants for physical motion. Caring more about the personal relationships of people you will never meet than your own. Shrugging your shoulders at the knowledge that your government is populated by criminal liars intent on fooling you into impoverished, helpless submission. Cheering this process on.

Exhibit A: You don't even know who your congressman is.

Sentence: Deathbed realization that your entire life was an unending series of stupid mistakes and wasted opportunities, a priceless gift of potential extravagantly squandered, for which you deserve nothing but scorn or, at best, indifference, and a cold, meaningless demise.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 10:23 AM  |

Slate: Where did the concept for 24 come from? Did it start as a show about counterterrorism or as a show that would take place in 24 episodes over a single day?

Loceff: It really started with a single idea from a single person, Joel Surnow. He came up with the idea of a show that took place in 24 hour-length, real-time episodes over the course of one day, and he called Bob Cochran, his producing partner, and pitched it to him. And Bob said, "It's a great idea, it'll never work, don't call me again." The idea that you could stitch together every detail episode to episode and preserve continuity for the length of a season and tell a story while using no time cuts, no flashbacks, nothing but pure real time just seemed too difficult. To create a situation where each new episode has to start in the exact same place as the previous one, with the actors' hair in the exact same place, seemed crazy. But Joel called Bob back the next day, and that was it.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 10:02 PM  |

There has been a lot a positive and negative reaction regarding Starbuck. Initially, it surrounded just the idea of the character as a woman. But no one had gotten a chance to even get to know your character back then. Now, two seasons in, have you read anything about her?

I don't read them. My mom does. If there's a good one, or a funny one that's really bad, she tells me to read it. I think one time, someone said I was so ugly it looked like I fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down, and landed on my face. (Laughs.) And then, I climbed on top of a 10-story building, fell off of that, and landed on my ass. I was like, that's really funny! Obviously someone went through that much effort to figure out, you know, how my ass got flat and my face ... that's funny. You have to laugh about it.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 1:00 PM  |

Beautiful, ass-kicking women have jiggled and trounced their way through the criminal underworld since comics’ inception. Publishers know that their young, mostly male readership likes a little sex with their violence and they’ve always obliged. And while one could construe powerful female characters as almost feministic, when combined with titillating art, an obvious conflict emerges. Those images contradict any pretense of equality when the subjects become sex objects. No comic creator should justify scantily-clad super-heroines with, “Well, she’s a really strong woman.“ I doubt most comic creators see their female characters as feminist icons. They may like the characters for other reasons, and like most men, they like breasts. Again, they draw what they like. Yet, I know that superhero comics that double as soft-core porn repel some female readers. I’m not offended by those images, but I’m a guy. However, while I don’t want comics to serve as feminist manifestos, the comic industry must realize that some comics’ depiction of women repels potential readers by focusing more on boobies than on story. Ultimately, most female heroines don’t depict “empowered, independent womyn” so much as male fantasies combining sex and violence. Personally, it only bothers me when it lowers superhero comics to juvenile wish-fulfillment instead of using them to address questions of morality, power and responsibility, and the like. I don’t mean that DC should inspect every panel of WONDER WOMAN to remove any distracting cleavage, but there are a number of titles that traffic more in tits and ass than story.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 9:39 AM  |

"This series could go 15 years," he says. "This could be Law & Order. If we do the CTU thing for seven years and then want to do a day in the life of a cop with a different actor, we can."

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 12:55 AM  |

Oval Office
You are standing inside a White House, having just been elected to the presidency of the United States. You knew Scalia would pull through for you.

There is a large desk here, along with a few chairs and couches. The presidential seal is in the middle of the room and there is a full-length mirror upon the wall.

What do you want to do now?

> INVADE IRAQ
You are not able to do that, yet.

> LOOK MIRROR
Self-reflection is not your strong suit.

> PET SEAL
It's not that kind of seal...

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 5:23 PM  |

Our aesthetic psychology has remained unchanged since the building of cities and the advent of writing some 10,000 years ago, which explains why The Iliad and The Odyssey of Homer, and the Epic of Gilgamesh, remain good reading today.

We haven't lost Pleistocene tastes for fat and sweet foods, nor have we lost our ancient tastes for artistic entertainment.

The fascination, for example, that people worldwide find in the exercise of artistic virtuosity, from Praxiteles to Renee Fleming, is not a social construct, but an evolutionary adaptation; the worldwide interest in sports comes from a similar source.

The idea of a DVD magazine full of odd little films still sounds great. But maybe it's the kind of idea that should be executed by somebody other than the editors of self-consciously weird literary magazines.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 10:08 AM  |

I didn’t list any program as “top ten” that doesn’t fund all of its students and fund them all equally. I think this issue is extremely important, as it levels the playing field in workshops and makes for a less-competitive atmosphere.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 12:50 PM  |

In nationwide open casting calls, potential heroes will arrive in costume to prove their mettle, revealing the true nature of their superhuman abilities and invoking the noble credos by which they live. From these thousands of hopefuls, Stan Lee will choose 11 lucky finalists to move into a secret lair and compete for the opportunity to become a real-life Superhero!

Finalists will leave their former lives behind and live as their brainchild heroes 24/7, all under Stan Lee's watchful eye. Each week, our aspiring heroes will be challenged with competitions designed to test their true superhero abilities. It's not all just leaping tall buildings in a single bound, a true Superhero will be tested for courage, integrity, self-sacrifice, compassion and resourcefulness. In the end, only one aspiring Superhero will have the strength and nobility to open the gates to comic book immortality.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 7:22 PM  |

Opponents have claimed that Dawkins offers a bleak view of humanity, something he categorically denies. "The chances of each of us coming into existence are infinitesimally small," he argues, "and even though we shall all die some day, we should count ourselves fantastically lucky to get our decades in the sun." But even he expresses regret at our long-term prospects. "Within 50 million years, it's highly unlikely humans will still be around and it is sad to think of the loss of all that knowledge and music."

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 10:44 AM  |

One night in January 2001, Larry Wachowski, co-director of the blockbuster Matrix movies, walked into a dark club in West Hollywood, where the rules of identity easily blurred, just like in his films. The Dungeon served the devoted BDSM -- bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism -- community in Los Angeles. It was a place where power dynamics between two different types of people were regularly played out: eager submissives, or slaves, and the dominatrixes who, for an hour or for a night, took complete charge of their minds and bodies, using ropes, whips, chains, knives and needles. Wachowski fell into the former category. And, friends say, he liked engaging in his pastime while dressed like a woman.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 12:06 AM  |

Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus with a kiss, is to be given a makeover by Vatican scholars.

The proposed “rehabilitation” of the man who was paid 30 pieces of silver to identify Jesus to Roman soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane, comes on the ground that he was not deliberately evil, but was just “fulfilling his part in God’s plan.”

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 12:41 AM  |

But the teasing this writer does
is harmless, really, and contrary
to what some critics have suggested,

the problem with his work
is not that it is disrespectful,
but that it is not disrespectful enough;

it never cracks wise
to the teacher's face,
but meekly returns to its desk,

lending itself with disappointing ease
to the stale imagery
of teachers, desks and wisecracking.

In the end, what we need
from a poet with Collins's talent
is not a good-natured wave

from writer to reader,
or a literary joke, or a mild chuckle;
what we need is to be drawn

high into the poem's cloud-filled air
and allowed to fall
on rocks real enough to hurt.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 12:00 AM  |

For a reader, even one devoted to comics as a form, to admit that the best book of the season is a collection of comic strips is to admit that there is something missing on the bookshop shelves.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 8:48 PM  |