Exile

Conjunctions #62

by Bradford Morrow (editor)

From the moment homes and homelands came into being, exile ensued. While narratives of exile share themes of banishment, loss and longing, they are as diverse as the human experience itself. Writers as different as Homer and Heinlein, Aeschylus and Camus addressed this subject. In The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie conceives of exile as “a dream of glorious return. Exile is a vision of revolution. It is an endless paradox: looking forward by always looking back.” Its permutations know no bounds. The political dissident deported, or jailed, under house arrest; the defected spy; the classic prince banished by his royal father from the city gates; the communal exile of the diaspora. Through cutting-edge fiction, poetry and essays by emerging voices and contemporary masters, Conjunctions: 62, Exile explores the ramifications of expulsion and ostracism. Contributors include Edie Meidav, Peter Straub, Can Xue, H.G. Carrillo, Ales Steger, Maxine Chernoff and others.

331 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Bradford Morrow has lived for the past thirty years in New York City and rural upstate New York, though he grew up in Colorado and lived and worked in a variety of places in between. While in his mid-teens, he traveled through rural Honduras as a member of the Amigos de las Americas program, serving as a medical volunteer in the summer of 1967. The following year he was awarded an American Field Service scholarship to finish his last year of high school as a foreign exchange student at a Liceo Scientifico in Cuneo, Italy. In 1973, he took time off from studying at the University of Colorado to live in Paris for a year. After doing graduate work on a Danforth Fellowship at Yale University, he moved to Santa Barbara, California, to work as a rare book dealer. In 1981 he relocated to New York City to the literary journal Conjunctions, which he founded with the poet Kenneth Rexroth, and to write novels. He and his two cats divide their time between NYC and upstate New York.

Visit his website at www.bradfordmorrow.com.

Reviews

[Bill Hsu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very uneven, like the two other Conjunctions I've read.

Pieces I like so far:

Christine Hodgen, Customer Reviews. This starts out being really funny, but the unexpected change in perspective at the end is poignant and nicely executed.

Laura van den Berg, Havanna. Hazy, dream-like, sliding into disaster. As gripping as anything in her excellent collection The Isle of Youth.

Baudelaire, Poor Belgium etc. Hilarious, simply over the top.

Brian Evenson, Cult. A tasty morsel of obsession to gnaw on, while we wait for his next collection or novel.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some excellent fiction, i found the essays hard going. even the baudelaire piece, which i guess could have been comical but was mostly too whiny. my favorite was a piece that revisited the island of doctor moreau and the invention of morel in conjunction with a mirror-induced mental break.