Focus: The New Campus Novel Volume 43, Number 4 Winter 2022 Excerpts available through Project Muse; full articles available to Project Muse subscribers. From the Editor The Cabinetmaker’s Apprentice by Jeffrey R. Di Leo Focus: The New Campus Novel Introduction: The New Campus Novel  by Matthew Roberson Millenial Fiction Meets the Campus Novel by Jeffrey J. Williams Rachel L. E. Klammer reviews Notes on a Thesis by Tiphaine Rivière Specters of Bloom by Jeffrey R. Di Leo Julie Schumacher reviews All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost by Lan Samantha Chang Marta J. Lysik reviews The Friend: A ..read more

Focus: Soldier Writing Volume 43, Number 3 Fall 2022 Excerpts available through Project Muse; full articles available to Project Muse subscribers. From the Editor The Wild Wild West by Jeffrey R. Di Leo Focus: Soldier Writing The Challengers by M.C. Armstrong HED: Afghanistan, Changing Room of Empires by Adrian Bonenberger Caleb S. Cage reviews Empire City: A Novel by Matt Gallagher MaxieJane Frazier reviews Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing: Essays by Lauren Hough Colin Cutler reviews Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Sadaawi, trans. Jonathan Wright Collin Halloran reviews Stories Are What Sa ..read more

In the spirit of the 2006 list of best first lines of novels, American Book Review Volume 29, No. 2, published in 2008, featured a list of 100 best last lines of novels.  Editor Charlie Harris contacted reviewers, critics, professors, writers, and readers to submit last lines for consideration and then vote to rank the “top 100” last lines. The accompanying responses published in this issue, which identify omissions or weaknesses in the list, make for interesting reading.  The reactions demonstrate that perhaps the most useful part of a list-making exercise is the provocation to c ..read more

Focus: Autofiction and Autotheory Volume 43, Number 2 Summer 2022 Excerpts available through Project Muse; full articles available to Project Muse subscribers. From the Editor Dark Academe by Jeffrey R. Di Leo Focus: Autofiction & Autotheory Introduction: Autofiction, Autotheory, and Regimes of Visibility by Laura Cernat Autofiction across Borders: Anglo-Metamorphoses of a French Concept by Karen Ferreira-Meyers “Certain people were born with the internet inside them and suffered greatly from it”: Autofiction at the Intersection of Self, Sociality, and Mediation by Anna Poletti Refugee ..read more

Serious Fiction Volume 42, Number 4 May / June 2021 Excerpts available through Project Muse; full articles available to Project Muse subscribers. Stephen J. Burn’s Introduction to Focus: Serious Fiction Toon Staes reviews Karen Tei Yamashita’s Sansei and Sensibility Beatrice Pire reviews Mary K. Holland’s The Moral Worlds of Contemporary Realism Daniel Green reviews Mauro Javier Cárdena’s Aphasia Yonina Hoffman reviews Lee Siegel’s Typerotica Tom LeClair reviews Don DeLillo’s The Silence Jurrit Daalder reviews Charlie Kaufman’s Antkind Mary K. Holland reviews Adrienne Miller’s In the Land ..read more

Focus: Pandemic Poetry Volume 43, Number 1 Spring 2022 Excerpts available through Project Muse; full articles available to Project Muse subscribers. From the Editor Why Is There Nothing — Rather Than Something? by Jeffrey R. Di Leo Focus: Pandemic Poetry Introduction: Poetry and Pandemic: Modern Marriage, Ancient Partners by Elizabeth Cohen Celia Bland reviews When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry ed. by Joy Harjo, LeAnne Howe, and Jennifer Elise Foerster Lisa Rhoades reviews Goldenrod by Maggie Smith Amy Guglielmo revie ..read more

Focus: Critical Pleasure Volume 42, Number 6 September / October 2021 Excerpts available through Project Muse; full articles available to Project Muse subscribers. Gina Masucci MacKenzie’s Introduction to Focus: The Drive Beyond Pleasure Daniel T. O’Hara reviews Daniel Mendelsohn’s Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate Jeffrey R. Di Leo — Critical Pleasure under Late Capitalism Daniel Rosenberg Nutters reviews Lode Lauwaert’s Marquis de Sade and Continental Philosophy and Alyce Mahon’s The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde Christa DiMarco reviews Mariella Guzzoni’s Vincent’s ..read more

Charles Johnson reviewed Richard Wright’s American Hunger in the inaugural issue of the American Book Review, Volume 1 , No. 1, December 1977. We still ask all the wrong questions about Richard Wright. Interest in his fictions, essays, and autobiographical Black Boy declines (all black writing does) when black people are not trashing property or promising violence. Seventeen years after Wright’s death, we congratulate ourselves smugly, as Jimmy Carter does, about the “New South,” shelve Eight Men and The Outsider, and forget that the dreamlike deformations of the black world in Wright’s ..read more

Cybernetics Volume 42, Number 1 November-December 2020 Excerpts available through Project Muse; full articles available to Project Muse subscribers. Henry Sussman’s Introduction to Focus: Cybernetics Caroline A. Jones reviews Gene Youngblood’s Expanded Cinema Paul Pangaro reviews Andrew Pickering’s The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future R. John Williams reviews Scott A. Midson’s Cyborg Theology: Humans, Technology, and God Nina Wexelblatt reviews Grant Bollmer’s Theorizing Digital Cultures Bruce Clarke reviews Catherine Malabou’s Morphing Intelligence: From IQ Measurement to Arti ..read more

Detective Fiction Volume 42, Number 5 July / August 2021 Excerpts available through Project Muse; full articles available to Project Muse subscribers. David Watson’s Introduction to Focus: Detective Fiction Eric Sandberg reviews Chan Ho-Kei’s Second Sister Daiana Gârdan reviews Transnational Crime Fiction: Mobility, Borders and Detection Susan Elizabeth Sweeney reviews Keith Ridgway’s Hawthorn & Child and Keith Ridgway’s A Shock Lawrence Ware reviews HBO’s Watchmen Catherine Ross Nickerson reviews Becky Cooper’s We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence ..read more