Conjunctions: 65, Sleights of Hand: The Deception Issue

by Bradford Morrow (Editor)

Children deceive, as do grownups, and many are the moments when all of us even deceive ourselves. People of every age and stripe, whether rarely or often, dissimulate, bluff and beguile. The writer who fabricates and populates worlds is a deceiver, as is the artist whose triumph is to trick the eye, to alter perception. The honest magician's livelihood is based on deception; so is the dishonest thief's. And consider the great Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva who wrote, "A deception that elevates us is dearer than a legion of low truths," thus complicating the subject entirely. This special issue of "Conjunctions" gathers a wide spectrum of essays, fiction and poetry on the classic subject of deception, exploring in original and thought-provoking ways a world in which truth is a most fragile, elaborate and mercurial thing. Contributors include Edie Meidav, Terese Svoboda, Yannick Murphy, Paul Hoover, Bim Ramke, Eleni Sikelianos, Magdalena Zyzak and many others.

Genres: Short Stories, Anthologies

366 pages, Paperback

First published January 26, 2016

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

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

an intriguing theme, though only a subset of the stories seemed to take it seriously. that didn't deplete the stories themselves tho! i liked the fake art history.

[Mary Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Conjunctions is big and thick, and the pieces don’t always stick to the theme as closely as one might like. (Why set a theme if you’re not going to follow it?) But Morrow’s delightfully strange and spooky “Tactics of the Wraith” is anthology-worthy, and Svoboda’s eerie little tragedy (which, in fact, sticks the theme beautifully) is a memorable gem.

2022 Read Harder Challenge
15. A new-to-you literary magazine (print or digital).

[Devin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review also available at: https://devinhurd.herokuapp.com/singl...

If everything was as good as the first story in this collection this would be an easy 5-stars. There are a smattering of memorable stories here and there. And a bit of a dry essay at the end. But this one certainly delivers a fantastic opening. Honestly, that tale of an invented Mexican Edgar Allen Poe come to life is worth the entire issue.