rakemag

April 14, 2004 It’s spring sale time, with plenty of fun and informative tastings to go along with the vigorous market. New releases have arrived, the economy is trying its best to support our interest in better wines, and soon, it is promised, our landscape will finally turn from gray to green. Surdyk’s led the … Read more

“Just to get it over with and done.” While that’s the fictional Tyrell Rawls speaking in “Cumberland Breakdown,” from Oates’ latest collection of stories, I Am No One You Know, he could be explaining how his creator has churned out no fewer than forty-three novels by the age of sixty-six. Without a doubt, there’s more … Read more

Considering her Pulitzer for A Thousand Acres, a deft recasting of Shakespeare’s King Lear in the cornfields of Iowa, Jane Smiley knows very well how to spin good fiction from the human capacity for self-delusion and hubris. She attacks that theme from another angle in Good Faith (due in paperback May 11), in which greed, … Read more

For a guy who so clearly enjoys a tasty snack, Steve Almond looks awfully thin in his author’s photo. In Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America, the Boston-based food writer waxes rhapsodic on Tangy Taffy, Goo Goo Clusters, Peanut Bing, and a hundred others we’d never even heard of—small wonder, considering that … Read more

If a flock of crows is a “murder,” what should you call a flock of mystery writers? An exhumation, perhaps. Whatever the term is, this month brings new books by four Minnesota-based authors of thrillers and police procedurals. In the interest of supporting the hometown team, here’s a rundown of whodunnit and where they’ll be … Read more

For its eleventh year, the Walker’s annual celebration of female film directors kicks off with the apropos new documentary In the Company of Women, a look at the vital role of female filmmakers in the nineties’ independent-cinema explosion. Though it sometimes feels like a ninety-minute commercial for the Independent Film Channel (which funded it), it’s … Read more

-Full tank of gas that has appreciated 100 percent -Cabin polarized into cobwebs versus dustbunnies -Outhouse tipped over by sleeper cell of black bears -Hole in cereal boxes, turds on counters, tiny mouse-sized keg of Bud Light -A startled Dick Cheney reading “Tuesdays With Morrie”

Thanks for Clinton Collins, Jr.’s comments on gay marriage [Free the Jackson Five, March]. It’s admirable that he uses his column in a way that reflects compassion for people in general. I should mention that I’m straight—not that it matters except that it shows that I’m writing purely out of a desire to commend Clinton … Read more