Review by Mack Hassler “Special Agent Gracie Hart … is eager to be the next Miss United States … Sandra Bullock stars as an [undercover] operative posing as a contestant In order to ferret out a terrorist targeting the event” — Product information for the film, “Miss Congeniality” (DVD 2000)…
Review by Mack Hassler “‘You are Israel’s teacher, said Jesus, ‘and do you not understand … ?’ — John 2:25 “But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God”‘ — John 3:…
Review by Mack Hassler Tantae molis erat Romanem condere gentum “How hard it was to found the race of Rome” Near the end of Book I, Vergil The Aeneid, written close to Christ’s birth I love the interplay in this epigraph between the language play in ancient thought given to…
Review by Mack Hassler “That is why it was called Babel— because the Lord confused the language of the whole world” Genesis 11:9 I think I will always, in a way, be thankful that God’s new creation of mankind in the Garden was a failed experiment. Adam and Eve and…
Review by Mack Hassler “…In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” Fourth Gospel, by Saint John, 1:1 I have…
Review by Mack Hassler A beautifully-designed chapbook by Amy Hansen, Superior Stories is the product of workshopping for creative writers and chosen by chief judge Brian Gruley as the latest of this long series of chapbook winners. I have not reviewed any of the series previously, but the work of…
Review by Mack Hassler One of my great literary heroes is Samuel Johnson, “…the style of a man who thinks with rigorous clarity and as the author of a dictionary has the whole language at his command.” (from the Preface to Johnson’s The History of Ressalas by Michael Lewis, professor…
Review by Mack Hassler Scott Fitzgerald published and sold to mass-market and glossy magazines that paid well in order to maintain the expensive life style that his debutante wife Zelda expected. As a major American fiction writer, he also published four financially successful novels. This substantial collection gathers 43 of…
Review by Mack Hassler Oh Jake,” Brett said “We could have had such a damned-good time together…. “Yes,” I said, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” “You are all a lost generation” Gertrude Stein in conversation The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway (1926) I…
Review by Mack Hassler “then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more” …
Review by Mack Hassler “ … upon this rock I will build my Church…. I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven. Wharever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on on earth shall…
Review by Mack Hassler “…his demons are driving him [the lead violinist]….The company takes up the choruses and men and women cry oit like all possessed… some celebrate the beauty of the bride and the joys of love in the excitement….” Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1929), pp. 10-11. “…[a study]…
Review by Mack Hassler “The World was all before them , where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide … hand in hand with wandering steps and slow Through Eden [they] took their solitary way.” …
Review by Mack Hassler “Young Mason would spend much of his time in far off New York City…where there was work to be done in the new Nation.” Life and Times of Steven Thomas Mason Boy Governor of Michigan, Lawton T. Hemans (1920). I have been reading for review some books…
Review by Mack Hassler “ We know what we are but know not what we may be” William Shakespeare, daily quote in the news sheet of my retirement home on the birthday of Shakespeare, 23 April 2025. We know that Lawton Hemans did not live to see his masterpiece in…
Review by Mack Hassler References Paul Fussell, Meter and Poetic Form (1965) Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (1975) Kelly Peach prides himself on being an “author” in a rather charming way in Please, Do Not Tap on the Glass about the form of his poems. I have…
Review by Mack Hassler “Sheriff George looked at Ashley and Franklin, ‘To begin with, Evangeline’s real father called me almost two months ago to ask me to find Evangeline.’” p. 59 Both the great New England poet Longfellow and the TV series Longmire, a crime drama based on the Walt…
Review by Mack Hassler “A doctor gave his patient six months to live, but he couldn’t pay his bill, so he gave him another six months.” — Henny Youngman, comic (1906-1998) Recent Yooper writers of humor that I have reviewed may or may not know Henny Youngman’s one-liners, but I…
