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 “The Lord will guide you continually…. And make your bones strong….Your ancient ruins shall aise up the foundations of many generations…. Isaiah 58: 8, See also Genesis 2: 15-25 As I prepare to write these reviews of what seems to me a new and important regional…
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…
Review by Mack Hassler “Mark Twain’s Huck Finn underlies all American Literature” Character of Hemingway in Midnight in Paris (2011) by Woody Allen When he writes, produces, and directs film, Woody Allen can be brilliant. In the epigraph above, he captures an idea about Hemingway often found in scholarly work. …
Review by Mack Hassler “…the novel is a reflection upon its own nature” Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, 1963 Usually in good fiction there is an autobiographical impulse that may be seen in the mode of storytelling. In his later novels and stories, the great Romantic master of the…
Review by Mack Hassler “Therefore the land mourns… Together with the wild animals” Hosea 4:3 This first novel by Hinman has captured my interest so completely that I do not want to stop reading. Her editor at Superior Book Productions is Tyler Tichelaar, well-known for his own many books. In…
Review by Mack Hassler “It is a poetry where the world becomes writing and language becomes the double of the world” — Octavio Paz Booksellers and especially publishers hope that books may be part of commerce. So it seems only fair that commercial books may be reviewed as though…
