Frank Zingrone

interviewed by Derek Alger

Originally published on September 1, 2001

Frank Zingrone, a respected Canadian communications scholar, explores the paralyzing power of new communication technologies, while offering a way out of an age of computerized chaos in his most recent book, The Media Symplex: At the Edge of Meaning in the Age of Chaos. Zingrone, a founding member of the department of communications at York [...]

Future Boston

reviewed by Diane Greco

Originally published on September 1, 2001

For the last month, I’ve been practicing the phrase, “I used to live in Boston,” but it still feels strange to say it. In two weeks, I’ll put all my stuff in a truck and head south to New York. I’m prepared, but after eight and a half years, leaving this city isn’t going to [...]

Both Magazine

reviewed by Tom Hartman

Originally published on September 1, 2001

Finally… In addition to demonstrating that it’s quite possible to make a cool text-only web page, the homepage of Both magazine, a 1 year-old print mag out of Alston, MA, that has published work by James Tate, Tomaz Salamun and Joe Wenderoth among others, also showcases a truly marvelous sample poem by Michael Lynch, titled [...]

Goodreports

reviewed by Tom Hartman

Originally published on September 1, 2001

Goodreports is a Canadian indie book site of reviews, essays links and etc. – sort of a home-published, North-of-the-Border Rain Taxi or NYT Books section. Amidst an assortment of capable criticism, bestseller lists, a trivia challenge and other content is editor Alex Good’s “Puffy Awards”, launched to honor “that most essential of all contemporary literary [...]

Tragos

reviewed by Tom Hartman

Originally published on September 1, 2001

For many a twenty-something guy, spending three weeks as the researcher at Hustler magazine (where your duties include sorting reader-submitted cheesecake shots, fact-checking cover model bios and procuring copies of competing magazines for the boss) might just be the temp-job equivalent of nirvana. For a woman, however, as Margaret Gray tells us in her memoir, [...]

Vestal Review

reviewed by Tom Hartman

Originally published on September 1, 2001

Reading Jakob Nielsen’s recommendations on writing web content in Designing Web Usability, one can’t help but consider all the different kinds of text-based content that can’t possibly be bulletized, chunked, or otherwise distilled to some web-friendly essence – like fiction, for example. There’s no doubt that publishing fiction presents some serious usability problems for ‘zine [...]

The Good Life

by Loraine Shields

Originally published on September 1, 2001

The Mah Jong Cafe was across the street from the Gulf. Even though it was late October, the sun was warm and the breeze sultry. The waves made little more than a lapping sound that was hard to hear through the passing traffic and the cries and laughter of some children playing in the sand. [...]

Law of Inertia

by Rebecca Seiferle

Originally published on September 1, 2001

from Bitters We’ve all known those transfixed a moment. The girl, so golden in fifth grade, dulls out, bragging of being a local photo-shop manager by faded sixteen. More than mere accident; some moment when time itself seems to conspire on the self’s behalf. A harried mother grows perceptive and poised, one semester of English [...]

Modus Operandi

by Rebecca Seiferle

Originally published on September 1, 2001

from Bitters You were never to consider the worm itself, drowning upon the hook, in a drift of river or lake, or how it felt when the barb punctured its body at three or four strategic points. . .coiled tightly around the metal, so it would survive again and again your casting into the distance, [...]

The Argument

by Rebecca Seiferle

Originally published on September 1, 2001

from Bitters I cannot believe in the saccharine comforter, the eyewash of light,                                   that All, regardless of will or desire, suffocate in heaven’s wing. Even in my father’s decrepit Saint James, stolen from one of his many wives, its binding flaking away from having been read too much,                       I find no word of [...]