Volume 41, Issue 4

Front Cover: Rebecca A Kandell
Photo of Eqbal Ahmad
Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors
Eqbal Ahmad, by David Barsamian
The Canon of Apologia, a story by Yuri Izdryk, translated by Michael M. Naydan
Angel City, a story by Elizabeth Porto
Why Speak?, a poem by Nathaniel Bellows
The Triple Courage of Charlotte Delbo, by Rosette C. Lamont
Fragment, a poem by Jan Conn
Puzzles and Pilgrimages (Business or Pleasure?), by Marietta Pritchard
The Queen of Spelling, a story by Stephen Guinan
What Literature Can and Cannot Do: Lionel Trilling, Richard Rorty, and the Left, by Brock Clarke
Talmoon, a poem by Inara Cedrins
Dahlberg Redivivos, by Mark Jay Mirsky
Pantoum, a poem by Mary Beth O’Connor
True Tales, a story by Peter LaSalle
Plan B, a story by Beth Goldner
Kyoto Panorama Project, a story by Kyoko Yosh
Contributors
David Barsamian is Director of Alternative Radio, which is broadcast on public stations throughout the U.S., Canada, and Australia. He has contributed to Z and The Nation. This essay is excerpted from his recent book Eqbal Ahmad: Confronting Empire (South End Press, 2000, www.southendpress.org).
The poems of Nathaniel Bellows have appeared in numerous journals, including Ploughshares, The Paris Review, andThe New Republic.
Inara Cedrins teaches English, literature, and writing at Tsinghua University, Beijing. Her poems, stories, and translations have appeared in The North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and Chelsea.
Brock Clarke has worked as a newspaper reporter and in a fiberglass plant, and now teaches creative writing at Clemson University. His short story collection What We Won’t Do, won the 2000 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, and will be published by Sarabande Books in 2001.
Jan Conn has published five volumes of poetry, the most recent of which, Beauties on Mad River, appeared this year. She teaches biology and entomology at the University of Vermont.
Beth Goldner is a freelance editor who lives in West Chester, PA. She recently finished a collection of short stories, from which “Plan B” is taken. She’s currently at work on a novel.
Stephen Guinan lives with his wife and son in Columbus, OH where he teaches at Columbus Torah Academy. His stories have appeared in The Old Crow Review, Heartlands Today, and Passages North.
Ukrainian writer, essayist, artist, and musical composer Yuri Izdryk lives in Kalush, Ukraine. His stories and prose pieces include: “Apocrypha” (1992), “Biography of an Artist” (1993), and Wozzeck (1996).
Rosette C. Lamont is a regular contributor to MR; her last essay, Coma Versus Comma: John Donne’s Holy Sonnets in Edson’s WIT, appeared in our 40th Anniversary issue (Winter, 1999).
Peter LaSalle‘s books include a novel, Strange Sunlight, and two story collections, The Graves of Famous Writers and Hockey Sur Glace.
Mark Jay Mirsky is a founder and editor of FICTION and the Director of the Program in Jewish Studies at The City College of New York. His book, The Absent Shakespeare, was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award.
Michael M. Naydan is a Professor of Ukrainian and Russian Literature at Pennsylvania State University. He co-edited and co-translated From Three Worlds: New Writing from Ukraine (Glas and Zephyr Press, 1996).
A fiction writer as well as a poet, Mary Beth O’Connor lives in Ithaca, New York, and is an Assistant Professor in the Writing Department at Ithaca College.
Elizabeth Porto, winner of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow ship (2000), lives in Florence, MA, and is currently working on a novel.
Marietta Pritchard is a freelance writer, editor, and regular newspaper columnist.
Kyoko Yoshida was born and raised in Fukouka, Japan, and is pursuing graduate work in Creative Writing at University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Her short stories and essays have appeared in numerous journals, including the Alabama Literary Review, and the Western Humanities Review.