Far be it from this reviewer to sound like the book jacket blurbs on the hardcover edition of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections-.however it was a smooth ride. Through what terrain was the cruise control on you ask? Through the dispersing of a family and three of its five core members from Midwest to East Coast. The volume is about values and truth; lies, and what matters at closing time. Each time the emergency brake on the narrative of this volume is released it always manages to effortlessly return to its strident course. Meanwhile Franzen's wordy pour as fluid as petrol eventually leaves us off at the finale {which in the end remains perhaps the most questionable feature of this book}.

This writer was not able to travel up to the new DIA Beacon, New York museum in the old Nabisco box factory for the press preview on the second Sunday in May. However, on the Sunday following he made his way to the new place in the old space at the bottom of the descent of hill in the still sleepy river town.

The All star corps of an exquisite corpse/becomes a corpse/What becomes an exquisite corpse most One should walk into "Desire unbound", the survey of work from the late Surrealist movement (which originated at the Tate Gallery in London and now at the time of this writing in a re-charted version at the Metropolitan Museum of Art here in New York); as one should walk into any exhibition -or for that matter into a dream. Therein having dropped as many preconceptions as possible one should in the best of all possible worlds at least try to re-examine what is before one under the new parameters set up for them to take in the art.

"Dada," was criticism of art in and of itself, so, to sit and criticize criticism is like the proverbial dust inheriting the wind. The movement was oh so brief!...and now the venerable venues the Metropolitan Museum and National Gallery of Art in WDC have tried to recreate the spirit of via its' objects its' films and to a lesser or greater degree it's now all but deceased personalities.

Imagine a downhill skiing Buddhist monk in high-tech ski goggles reflecting saffron on a course then leveled for the gates are Christo's.

How can one review a bequest but if by request? Just as per a collection of works not yet donated but expected to be bequeathed an exhibition of a donated collection or an amalgamation of different donors gifts is like a meal at a restaurant -the gift in the end is the purchaser's choice. So in reviewing "American Legacy" (an exhibition of works recently donated or otherwise coerced -just kidding) by members of the board of trustees of the Whitney Museum of American Art I will just speak on individual works and other movements in pieces.

The over the well of and over the railing wall of the museum jumbotron conglomerate with the Mathew Barney "Cremaster" retrospective startles you at the summit improper at the Guggenheim showplace on Fifth Avenue. Here the ultimate art stadium of winds; ascents, and descents is (and maybe now at the time of your reading-was) given forth to spectacle legitimized by the invisible critical faculty (as to whomever the spectator horde becomes that day might begin to drool over the ledge to the scenes of punk mosh pits; Richard Serra slinging sculptural porridge, and paralympian champion Aimee Mullins reconfigured as a cheetah -all from the Cremaster three installment of the five film cycle around which the entire exhibit centers?)

Thirteen photographs by Afghan-American artist Shekaiba Wakili. Color, black and white, posed and not, the images are unified by belief that Muslim Women are misunderstood and far too silent.

it weard ow life wit det kyan canspyah fi shattah di awts most fragile diziah

ow histri an byagrafi kyan plat gense yu

an dem 'angst' an dem 'anomie gang-up pon yu

I made a schema for this review of Hoban's book on Basquiat, like a five-pointed star. It went Basquiat (book) voices schizophrenia music Basquiat. I was tormented badly this past year by a black-magic spell and ripped off by my record label. Both things cause me to lift books and magazines from stores sometimes, and as I was flyering for an indie movie, I snatched this book after scanning it. Basquiat's complete collection was in my possession as I flew from New York to Santa Monica & I spent the flight drinking in his figures, cartoons and diagrammatic bravados, like "Famous Negro Athletes" and "Most Young Kings get their Heads Cut Off." It was my clerical job at Christie's in 1989 where I first encountered Basquiat and as the book chronicles, after he died of a heroin overdose, they inventoried and sold his work.

Interesting how late seventies and eighties urban history is handled in the movie "Pinero." The movies producers and director/writer confirm a prediction made by Nuyorican Poet's Cafe co-founder Miguel Algarin more than 25 years ago about efforts to bring Latino creativity into the mainstream, "I see a lot of waste because before the great Hispanic hit is going to come out you're going to have to break through all of the cliches." Miguel Algarin August 1977. The movie about Miguel Pinero's life reinforces the view no matter how creative Puerto Ricans in the U.S. are we're still a bunch of savages

Mario Vargas Llosa, el escritor hispano-peruano de reconocida trayectoria dio una lectura de su más reciente novela Travesuras de la niña mala el día 15 de octubre en el Kaufmann Concert Hall de la YMCA sobre la calle 92 en Manhattan, más conocido como la “Y” en Nueva York.

La más reciente novela de Mario Vargas Llosa, el laureado escritor hispano-peruano, es un “page-turner”, o sea uno de esos libros que se empiezan y no se pueden soltar. Gran parte de ese logro es gracias una historia de amor insólita que nos hace recorrer seductoras ciudades del mundo como: Paris, Londres, Madrid y Tokio durante cuatro décadas, ilustradas con modas, colores, música y sabores. Añádale el trasfondo social de los años 50, 60, 70 y 80 vistos desde Europa hacia el Perú y la sensación, la remembranza, que es como está narrado el libro lo hará identificarse con la historia colectiva de las épocas.

GONE is thick with visual layers. It is a wry look at family and friends, where 'digi-scape' meets urban monument to reflect a hidden landscape of the underground artist. The story is loosely based on a television series from the early 70's -- a real life TV docu-drama called An American Family staring the "Louds" -- and un-folds during a family reunion in New York City. In GONE Dougherty employs archetypal and cartoony characters that drawn from her personal life experiences to tell a story that speaks to the New York fringe. She draws on a world of homegrown talent whose life stories blur with the real and imagined. Painter Amy Sillman plays a visiting mother and musician Frances Sorensen, plays Lance's ambiguous live-in "other."

Cool For You begins like a nostalgic joy ride tracing the roots of protagonist Eileen Myles, in and out of Boston and ends years later with a POV down Avenue D. This nonfiction novel lingers and pauses on some moments, only to shift and turn the next. The tone is cool detachment and endearing softness and it grabs the reader, who rides shotgun on the journey, from the first page:

"...we sat around the fire/ drinking my baby's blood/ Drinking my baby's blood?/ Shock value?/ Nothing shocks us anymore - me, you./ We can talk about this now can't we?"

As average Americans, on most ordinary days, we wake each morning in a far away place. There might be a transvestite singing gospel right outside our window, there might be an unfortunate day ahead of us—we might lose our jobs or miss old lovers, we might be alcoholics or cripples, we might be sad or broke, hungry, heart-broken, lost, but these kinds of troubles all seem internal luxuries when held up to the government sanctioned horrors that inhabit many faraway worlds. Rarely do we imagine that a bad day might entail a band of revolutionary guards walking into our offices as we are sitting over our coffee, and taking us away to be tortured or killed.

Hot off the University of Wisconsin Presses is J.A. Marzan's The Bonjour Gene -- a story that revolves around the French-descended, Puerto Rican family called Bonjour. Each family member carries with him or her the legacy of the chronic promiscuity of every Bonjour male. Communities in both Puerto Rico and New York City (boroughs included) are also forced to accept the growing populations of illegitimate Bonjour children. Mothers fear their Bonjour child will unknowingly fall in love with another Bonjour. The anxiety of this rampant wantonness is reiterated throughout the book from beginning to end, so that there is no doubt in the reader's mind that the gene is that of licentiousness and irresponsible lust.

The pages of Lolita Hernandez's Autopsy of an Engine and Other Stories from the Cadillac Plant ring with rhythmic industrial language intermeshed with the sorrows and bewilderment of Ms Hernandez as she bears witness to the events at the company. She tunes us in to the aging, the declining, and the death of Detroit's Cadillac Motor Car Company: "one orgasmic slam after another of fixtures and furniture into gondolas and c-five pans." We watch the destruction not only of Midwestern industry, but also of all the lives the plant is survived by as people prey like vultures on the remains of the closed facility, recovering metal scraps to sell.