essays

2006

23-Dec-2006
The Phenomenology of Reverb

David Rothenberg writes of the affective and effective power of reverb.

22-Dec-2006
Acoustic Cyberspace

Erik Davis discusses the relationship between electronic sound and environment.

12-Dec-2006
Sublime Frequencies' Ethnopsychedelic Montages

Marcus Boon explores the healing of traditional music.

01-Dec-2006
Critical Ecologies: Ten Years Later

Andrew McMurry looks back on ten years of ecocriticism and identifies a "new physiocracy," whose exclusive interest in technology is no better than the exclusive valuation of property that typified physiocrats of the Nineteenth-Century.

12-Nov-2006
Systems Theory for Ecocriticism

Reviewing Andrew McMurry's Environmental Renaissance, Stephen Dougherty questions the systems approach to ecocriticism.

11-Nov-2006
Introduction - Illuminated Criticism

Andrew McMurry introduces Katherine Acheson's review of Radiant Textuality, declaring that Acheson's illuminated critique exemplifies what's missing in McGann: the use of design not just to illustrate prose but also to extend a textual engagement.

11-Nov-2006
Multimedia Textuality; or, an Oxymoron for the Present

Katherine Acheson's free-standing hypertext demonstrates how design can reinforce what's said, offer a counterpoint, and, occasionally, convey a critique of the critic.

10-Nov-2006
Awesome and Terrifying

In his review of Lee Rozelle's Ecosublime, Andrew McMurry offers a contrasting understanding of the sublime as a term describing our closure to nature, not our openness.

03-Nov-2006
Long Talking Bad Conditions Illinois Blues: A Report on &Now, A Festival of Innovative Writing and Art

Ted Pelton writes an in-depth account not just of the &Now Conference at Lake Forest College but of the state of experimental writers and small press publishing.

29-Oct-2006
Dispersion

"Dispersion" is a short-story by Rob Swigart.

Pinocchio's Piccolo, or, How Tristram Shandy Got It Straight: Searching in Raymond Federman's Body Shards

Michael Wutz writes of how, in Raymond Federman's My Body in Nine Parts, body parts are represented as having registered, inscribed, contributed to Federman's life.

An Interview with Harry Mathews

Michael Boyden interviews Harry Mathews via email.

Fearful Symmetries

Harry Mathews writes of the inherent difficulties in translation - especially the translation of his own work.

The Dialect of the Tribe

This is a reprint of Mathews' short story which originally appeared in The Human Country: New and Collected Stories (Dalkey Archive 2002).

The Riddling Effect: Rules and Unruliness in the Work of Harry Mathews

Michael Boyden reflects on the stubborn and idiosyncratic fiction of Harry Mathews and introduces a new ebr gathering of work on and by Mathews.

28-Sep-2006
Anatomizing the Language of Love: An Interview with Lee Siegel

Stephen J. Burn interviews fiction writer Lee Siegel.

22-Sep-2006
Already Too Many Stories in the World

FC2 author and ebr "Fictions Present" editor Lance Olsen, in his 2005 novel offers one alternative for print fiction in the era of big data: to suggest and depict "the vastness of time when it is not strictly confined to numerical sequence."

08-Sep-2006
Notes from the Middleground: On Ben Marcus, Jonathan Franzen, and the Contemporary Fiction Combine

Davis Schneiderman revisits the non-debate between Jonathan Franzen and Ben Marcus, touches on recent flare-ups in the American Book Review and the NOW WHAT blog, and reflects on the economy of book jacket blurbs.