Back-stage pass in hand, Richard Halpern offers an excruciatingly funny close-reading of selected moments in Shakespeare, Sade, Wilde, Freud, and Lacan. But this is rough intellectual going for anyone not initiated in the finer pleasures of literary criticism. Readers should begin with an awareness, for example, of the commonplace that the diminutive, perfect perfume bottle in Shakespeare's Sonnet 5 "is the male womb of Shakespearean verse." Halpern proposes that the image of the perfume bottle replaces the strange process of baby-making with "the even more mysterious process whereby the young man's sexual substance - his semen - is distilled into poetry." If, for Shakespeare, the proper 'use' of semen isn't the creation of life but the creation of beauty, then perhaps we should conclude that "Shakespearean homosexuality is the aesthetic sublimate of sodomy." What, you will ask, about the dark remainder? The waste? It is there in the poem, living in "the half-light of wordplay, implication, and insinuation." In other words, "The Shakespearean sonnet gives off a perfume that contains just the slightest hint of feces." Halpern clarifies this subtle point with an account of the Sadean sublime: is there really any difference between sex with an old woman of indifferent personal hygiene and a brisk mountain walk in rugged terrain? Who can say?

The three remaining chapters recapitulate and strengthen Halpern's thesis that in poetry, sodomy and the sublime are, perhaps not at all paradoxically, related. A brisk rehearsal of the the old Derrida-Foucault debate about reason and madness appears in a reading of Oscar Wilde's "The Portrait of Mr. W.H." Here, Halpern teases out the sexual subtext of Derrida's 1996 anniversary tribute to his late teacher, in which he (Derrida) confesses to feeling intense, multiple repercussions deep inside. These must be "the aftershocks of theoretical sodomy," Halpern writes. After all, Derrida "is nothing if not a pushy bottom." In a stunning chapter on Freud's reading of Leonardo da Vinci's "St. Anne with Two Others," Halpern draws on Lacan's analogy of the map in his "Seminar on the Purloined Letter" to note that the infamous vulture on Anne's lap "does not occupy the representational depth of the painting but rather is splayed flatly across the surface of the canvas, at once obvious and invisible." It persists, Halpern writes, as a dead leftover - presumably a smelly one at that. In a strangely sober analysis of Lacan's reading of an icky, twelfth-century poem by Arnaut Daniel (involving the proposed ingesting of bodily waste as part of a test to win a fair lady's hand....whatever), Halpern concludes that as a vessel, the anus is considered "improper" because it can't hold seed. In the discourse of sodomy, he continues, "the anus is the paradigmatically empty space, the vessel as absolute void."

Halpern's point, finally, is that poets and sodomites share a creative process that is something quite different from a procreative process. I was left wondering what T.S. Eliot would say about this and turned to "The Waste Land" (which covers much the same rugged terrain as Halpern's book); I imagine he would simply cry "Jug jug" to dirty ears.

I first read the "Silver Kings: The Lives and Times of MacKay, Fair, Flood, and O'Brien, Lords of the Nevada Comstock Lode", because there was a family story that James G. Fair might be a lost relative. If he is it's quite distant, but the book was so interesting that I've since read everything I could get my hands on about the Comstock Lode and it's characters. Virginia City really did more as the birth place of the myths and truths of the Old West than did Tombstone or Dodge City. I am also an "Earp" buff and have read much available on the "Gun Fight" related characters. Even Samuel Clemens, later known as Mark Twain, was a reporter for the Virginia City newspaper during his early days. The book was fantastic. I'm glad to see it in reprint as I will give it as gifts to some of my friends. I had hunted long and hard for my old copy. If you like stories of the Old West you will enjoy this one. And the stories are true.
Senator Mike Fair
Oklahoma State Senator

I was not a big fan of log homes until I saw this book. I enjoyed seeing the depth of detail through the house, very similar to the work of James Cutler. A very fine book to add to the architectural libray.

By the 1980's, Phoenix needed a new library.

The requirements were simple. It had to be downtown, which has the highest crime rate in the city including a murder rate that is eight times the national average. The chief librarian wanted a big box, "a warehouse for books." Only limited funds were available, and budgets were being trimmed for a library system that circulates more books for less money than any other city in the nation.

Phoenix itself is a "branch plant" town where out-of-state businesses build box-like factories for semi-skilled workers who assemble products. The major media are owned by out-of-state companies. The university is famed as one of the top party schools in the nation. The crime rate is among the highest in the nation, social services are among the lowest, the traditional architectural style is the strip mall and the modern version is faux theme park, while urban sprawl spreads faster than ragweed. The library site is between a parking lot and the lush green lawns of a city park.

This may sound familiar other hard-pressed city officials.

It's a classic case of downtown urban renewal. Dozens of cities have faced similar challenges, and many have renovated old neighborhoods and historic districts. In Phoenix, the decision was to build a state-of-the-art library as one of the crown jewels needed to revive the downtown.

The new library is primarily due to the leadership of an outstanding mayor -- Terry Goddard -- who recognized the importance that quality means to civic pride. The result is that Phoenix architect Will Bruder built one of the outstanding new libraries in the nation. This book is primarily photographs and drawings, showing how it came to be and what it is today. It will inspire any public official faced with the need to do a lot more with less, and to do it with beauty. It shows that outstanding civic quality is possible despite sometimes severe budget limitations, and that signature buildings can be built without raiding the public treasury.

The east and west sides are clad in copper, one of the four C's on which Arizona was founded -- copper, cotton, citrus and climate. South side windows are shaded by adjustable louvres, for protection against temperatures that can reach 122 degrees. North windows use fabric sails to cut the glare. Twelve inch thick concrete walls shade the main portion of the building, soaking up heat during the day and allowing it to dissipate easily at night instead of soaking into the building.

The fifth floor Reading Room was inspired, at least in part, by the Frank Lloyd Wright design of the Johnson Wax Building which features tall columns that flare out at the top like lily pads. Bruder did something different; he designed tall columns that taper toward the top like massive dinner candles, with a circular skylight above each. The columns are laced together with a network of cables on which the roof floats, free of the walls and the columns. The atmosphere is like being out of doors.

In Bruder's words, the library embodies his core philosophy "that real architecture exists when both pragmatism and poetry are served with equal passion."

This book expresses it well. It shows what a community can accomplish when civic officials are willing "to think outside the box." Civic officials contemplating a major project, whether they have ample budgets or not, will find this book is an inspiration to soar above mediocrity.

Despite its modest format, this elegant monograph more than does justice to Vincent James' extraordinary copper pavilions floating in a birch forest, comprehensively illustrated here with a wide range of visual materials, from early design sketches, construction photographs, and extensive working drawings to exquisite images of the finished building through four seasons of rain, mist, snow, and sun. Fold-out plans are provided in the inside cover, with a location key to all photos for readers' convenience. The graphic design of the book is clearly a labor of love, far beyond the often perfunctory standard of architectural publishing. Professional readers will regret the absence of scale information, but this is a minor lapse amidst the books many virtues.

Stories about "real people" are common enough in your average grocery store paperback section, but in comic books, they're something of a rarity. When you're going that route, it definitely takes somebody with the talent and genius of Alan Moore to pull it off not only successfully, but brilliantly.

Moore has an off-putting sense of mysticism that fills the book, all the while leaving the reader in complete suspense the entire time, even at such mundane things as the main character waiting to use the bathroom. Moore's characterization is so powerful, so twisted, that even without a detailed plot backing them up, they'd be worth a good story in and of themselves.

Winner of a whole shebang of awards, this is a "comic book" that is definitely written for adults; and for once, not because of gratuitous sex or violence, but because it will challenge every erg of intellect you have to spare.

Being a self-proclaimed R&H buff, I was always scouting for this book and that. I found _Some Enchanted Evenings_ in a used bookstore. Besides amazing detail on both of the men and their previous works (before each collaborated with the other), there are fantastic pictures that I'd never seen before. I was highly impressed. Best of luck to anyone looking for this book--it's a wonderful addition to anyone's collection.

A poet herself, Galvan adds that dimension of sensitivity to her scholarly translation of a document valuable to all Sor Juana scholars. The edition is nicely printed and designed, adding to the attractiveness of this book. Ms Galvan's work on Sor Juana has been praised by other published scholars.

It may seem wilful to lead a selection of Oscar Wilde's major critical prose with an essay on left-wing politics, but 'The Soul of Man under Socialism' is more concerned with aesthetics than ethics: Wilde found socialism 'beautiful' because it encouraged freedom and individualism, freeing man to develop his emotional and imaginative lives. Wilde's Utopian scheme, as he admits, is gloriously impractical and contrary to human nature, but that's the point - it's because reforms are based on what is considered practical, rather than what might be possible or even unthinkable, that inequality and suffering persist. His vision of a future in which men dream and absorb Art as vaguely-imagined machines do all the menial work, reads like a delightful lampoon of HG Wells. Favourite Quotation: 'the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist and becomes a dull or amusing craftsman, an honest or dishonest tradesman').

The selection begins with examples of Wilde the professional reviewer at work, attending art lectures by Whistler, reading books by Pater and Swinburne, drawing attention to poetry anthologies by labouring socialists, praising an actress's memoirs. Some of the pieces are more theoretical, arguing, for instance, the importance and legacy of actors as critics of great theatre. Each article presents difficult and often radical ideas in an accessible and witty manner. FQ: 'where there is no exagerration there is no love, and where there is no love there is no understanding'.

'The Portrait of Mr. W.H.' (printed here in its extended 1889 revision) is quite simply one of the greatest achievements in the world literature of short fiction. 'Short story' doesn't begin to describe this work about a young scholar who commits suicide after being caught forging evidence to 'prove' a theory claiming that Shakespeare dedicated his Sonnets to a young actor-lover. 'Portrait' is mostly a dazzling exercise in critical play, but it is also a touching gay fantasy, a Nabokovian study of mad academics, a defence of 'forgery' as an aesthetic mode, a literary detective story, a history of the Elizabethan stage, an anthology of Elizabethan gossip, a Borgesian metaphysical puzzle and so much more. FQ: 'he always set an absurdly high value on personal appearance, and once read a paper before our Debating Society to prove that it was better to be good-looking than to be good'.

'In Defence of Dorian Gray' collects letters written by Wilde to hostile newspapers that branded his only novel immoral, decadent and demanded its interdiction. While it's depressing to see our hero stoop to these tedious non-entities, we must remember the dangerous influence of the reactionary press, and at least the letters make galvanising reading, helping Wilde formulate ideas that would shape the novel's famous 'All art is quite useless' preface. FQ: 'Good people exasperate one's reason; bad people stir one's imagination'.

But the major achievement here is the four-part collection 'Intentions', a still explosive series of critical dialogues, memoirs and essays which are only 'safe' today because they are labelled 'classic' - if anyone actually absorbed these radical, liberating pieces, with their provocative, teasing, shifting, playful, ironic, contradictory, unsystematic, aphoristic, hilarious assertions on Art, Beauty, Life, Philosophy, Morality, Ethics, Crime etc., the whole world would implode, or at least irrevocably change. 'The Decay of Lying' demolishes the depressing modes of realism and naturalism and the tyranny of facts; 'Pen, Pencil and Poison' is a portrait of Wainewright the Poisoner, Wilde discussing his crimes with the same aesthetic detachment as he does his art and writing; ''The Critic as Artist' is his masterpiece, a credo and a gauntlet; 'The Truth of Masks' is an essay on the importance of costume and historical accuracy when staging Shakespeare, and seems to contradict eveything else in the volume, with Wilde winningly admitting, 'Not that I agree with everything I have said in this essay'. FQ: 'The truth of metaphysics are the truth of masks'.

There are (at least) two Wildes in this volume; one whose address is utterly contemporary and congenial, intellectually curious, blasting all that is deadening, hypocritical and humbug, an alien in his own time. The other is startlingly Victorian, passionately engaged with elitist subjects that have little importance or (ugh) 'relevance' today (Classical literature, Aesthetics, the importance of form etc.), couching his theories in language that is often ornate, oritund, exotic, even verbose, a lush challenge to his fusty, pedantic peers.

Linda Dowling's introduction rescues Wilde from his earnest post-modern apologists and returns him fruitfully to his original context, the Oxford debates about 'Art for Art's sake' and the function of poetry and criticism,. Her copious notes are a blessing and necessity, as well as recreating a strange, wonderful, intellectually audacious cultural world, one that shames our depleted, dead-end, theory-strangulated, accept-anything age. I know you've heard this before, but this time it's true: BUY THIS BOOK AND LET IT CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

This is a very good book. I suggest you buy it!