Zenosbooks

The Neglected Books Page

• The Many Names of God … er, Coffee, from All About Coffee, by William H. Ukers (1922)
  Nepenthe Festive cup Juice divine Nectar divine Ruddy mocha A man’s drink Lovable liquor Delicious mocha The magic drink This rich cordial Its stream divine The family drink The festive drink Coffee is our gold Nectar of all men The golden mocha This sweet nectar Celestial ambrosia The friendly drink The cheerful drink The essential......
• Five Short Poems by Anne Wilkinson
  Zigzagzip Zigzagzip Cat o’nine tails whip The tender night To splintering applause.   I never see a stone I never see a stone Without an inward groan And feel again the impact of my race. For should I chance to peer beneath Its smooth and granite face I see no other Than a brother Come... Read more
• The Second Curtain, by Roy Fuller (1953)
  “Life was simply not like a detective novel: motives were not clear, events had not a single cause, things did not wholly explain themselves,” Roy Fuller writes in The Second Curtain (1953), one of the three books in which he played an elegant series of changes on the conventions of the mystery novel. In The... Read more
• W. R. Rodgers, Poet
  “In Ireland why a man becomes a poet is a question not to be asked,” writes Darcy O’Brien in W. R. Rodgers (1970), his fine memoir of the poet from the Bucknell University Press Irish Writers Series. Yet unlike the typical Irish poet, Rodgers did not really discover the poetry in himself until he was... Read more
• Reissuing the Works of R. V. Cassill – An Interview with Orin Cassill
  A few years ago, Orin Cassill, son of novelist and short story writer R. V. Cassill, contacted me after I began writing about the pulp novels his father wrote back in the 1950s and early 1960s. At the time, he was working to reissue some of his father’s novels and short story collections–a project that... Read more
• The Intellectual Lover and Other Stories, by David Freedman (1940)
  I have such hopes for The Intellectual Lover and other Stories, a collection of short stories written by David Freedman, a Romanian Jew who emigrated to the U.S. as a toddler, proved a prodigy at chess, and, after graduating from City College, became one of the most successful writers of jokes, sketches, and other material... Read more
• The Weekend Man, by Richard B. Wright (1970)
  There’s a sure-fire way to improve your chances of having your work ignored by English-reading audiences: Be Canadian. Even if your work is published in the U.S. and gets enthusiastic reviews, you have a better chance of joining the ranks of Richard B. Wright than those of the few exceptions to the rule, such as... Read more
• Digging for Mrs. Miller, by John Strachey (1941)
  Digging for Mrs. Miller (1941) illustrates how, in the right hands, simple, undramatic, and limpid prose can have a stunning impact. Originally published as Post D in England, Digging for Mrs. Miller is John Strachey’s thinly-fictionalized account of his experiences working as an air raid warden during the most intense months of the Blitz in... Read more
• Faces of Philip: A Memoir of Philip Toynbee, by Jessica Mitford (1984)
  Jessica Mitford describes Faces of Philip: A Memoir of Philip Toynbee as “A record of events, not purporting to be a complete history, but treating of such matters as come within the personal knowledge of the writer, or are obtained from certain particular sources of information.” With such a qualification, one can excuse the fact... Read...
• Mr. Eliot and Wystan, from As I Walked Down New Grub Street, by Walter Allen (1981)
  I have always thought of him as Mr. Eliot. When I went to London I ran into people who referred to him as Tom Eliot: I soon realised this did not always mean that they had met him. I saw him many times, so often indeed that it seemed to me that ifyou had your... Read more