Conjunctions #76

by Bradford Morrow (editor), Karen Russell, Lydia Davis

Paperback

Published January 1, 2021

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]

Like earlier issues that I've read, this is a mixed bag. Samuel Delany contributes a nuanced tale about the tribulations and sex life of homeless men and women. Peter Orner's vignettes are thoughtful miniature memories. Sanjena Sathian's "Mr. Ashok's Monument" is a charming magic realist story with multiple funny digs at rightwing government attitudes and practices.

The first half of Isabella Hammad's "Tramontana" reminds me a bit of Deborah Levy's Swimming Home, with its awkward, mercurial summer interactions, but maybe gentler; also skillfully executed and engaging.

If you're going to check out this issue for only one story, it should be Julia Elliott's "Another Frequency". Having spent my share of years with music and radio, I'm usually hyper-critical of stories that touch on these; however, I really enjoyed her descriptions of music, and the (now unfamiliar) experience of turning on an analog radio, moving the dial around, and chancing upon a broadcast that starts to take over one's afternoon. She might have relied a bit heavily on laundry lists of bands and composers, but hey, I approve of most of the ones here. Schnittke! Lindsay Cooper! Harry Partch! Aksak Maboul! (!) Klaus Nomi! Schoenberg! Messiaen! And so many thoughtful sentiments about the complexities of love and family, growing old, and the need for personal space. "Another Frequency" is not even listed in isfdb.org, argh. All the more reason to jump on it and trumpet its glories from the rooftops (or decrepit radios in dusty attics, as the case might be). I loved Elliott's collection The Wilds, but that was 2014; when's the 2nd collection coming out?