Tag: Rosebud Magazine

• Sustainable Living

  

  Sustainable Living
  Elsa Nekola
  Willow Springs Books 2021
  

  Reviewed by Bob Wake

  Wisconsin writer Elsa Nekola’s debut collection of short stories, Sustainable Living, is so deeply knowing of the Upper Midwest that it functions as a kind of wisdom literature. Granted, the wisdom may not always be welcome. Disillusionment is a recurring theme, as is the fictional town of White Birch, where old habits die hard. A retired supper club owner (“Winter Flame”) can’t quit his mealtime routine of “folding his cloth napkin into a swan.” The betrayal of a fragile summer friendship (“River Through a Half-Burnt Woods”) replays itself in a woman’s memory like a wound that refuses to heal.

  Fifteen-year-old Coral, the protagonist of “Oktoberfest,” feels preternaturally at home in the Northwoods, but less so in an adult world of struggling families and economic hardship. Addiction. Unwanted sexual attention. “She’s beginning to think,” we’re told, “that being a woman means staying where you’re needed, not where you want to go.”

  Coral, by story’s end, may not know where she wants to go, or where she fits in. But readers will recognize in the achingly fine-tuned descriptions of landscape and wildlife that Coral has a near-mystical connection to her surroundings:

  Today, there’s frost on the grass, and a chill that won’t leave the air until April. The mallards and black ducks have begun to court, and in midwinter the hairy woodpeckers will drum on hollow trees.

  Nekola is especially good on the complexities of mother-daughter relationships, whether a grown daughter in “Meat Raffle” returning from Chicago to visit her eccentric literary mom in southeastern Wisconsin (“She thinks she’s the first sixty-year-old widow to discover Shakespeare,” fumes the daughter), or the title story’s resourceful fourteen-year-old Myra Pavelka, abandoned to relatives and afternoon barrooms when her mother hastily takes flight under possible criminal circumstances.

  Sustainable Living won the 2020 Spokane Prize for Short Fiction from Willow Springs Books, whose top-notch book design compliments the jeweled precision of these stories. Elsa Nekola’s work has appeared in numerous literary journals, from Ploughshares and Passages North, to Rosebud Magazine and Midwestern Gothic.

  February 7, 2022

  Elsa Nekola, Midwestern Gothic, Northwoods, Passages North, Ploughshares, Rosebud Magazine, Spokane Prize for Short Fiction, Sustainable Living, Upper Midwest, Willow Springs Books, Wisconsin

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• Rosebud 56

  

  Rosebud 56 (Winter 2013/14) has arrived and it’s as strong an issue as editor Rod Clark has given us in twenty years of Rosebud goodness: From the vibrant nature-fueled Americana of featured Vermont artist Patricia LeBon Herb, to a selection of poetry from postwar Spanish writer José Ángel Valente newly translated by Thomas Christensen. Another must-read highlight is Rod’s Voice Over column, “Recuerdos: Guatamala 1976,” a harrowing first-person recounting of a notorious Latin American earthquake.

  Film lovers will find a treasure trove in issue 56: “Shadows on a Screen,” a knowing coming-of-age short story by Thomas Fuchs, son of Hollywood screenwriter Daniel Fuchs (Criss Cross [1949]); Victor A. Walsh’s fascinating essay on Nellie Crawford (a.k.a. Madame Sul-Te-Wan), “Breaking the Color Barrier: Hollywood’s first African-American actress”; and Jack Lehman’s haunting “fictional autobiography,” “Orson Welles in Wisconsin.”

  Also included are a pair of warm reminiscences of two iconic Wisconsin authors: Robert Zoschke’s “Norbert Blei (1935-2013): A writer with a capital ‘W,’” and Wisconsin State Journal columnist Doug Moe’s classic piece on Madison poet John Tuschen (1949-2005), “Poet is a Stranger in His Own Land.”

  Believe me, I’m only scratching the surface of this issue (cf., P.S. Mueller’s illustrated exploration of Baby Boomer obsolescence, “Fader”; Rick Geary’s cheerfully sinister Afterwords comic, “My Home Town”). And, sure, let’s not forget to mention my short story, “Ty-D-Bol Blue,” which I’m delighted to see in print after first appearing online in last summer’s Cambridge Book Review.

  January 15, 2014

  Daniel Fuchs, Doug Moe, Jack Lehman, John Tuschen, José Ángel Valente, Madame Sul-Te-Wan, Norbert Blei, Orson Welles, P.S. Mueller, Patricia LeBon Herb, Rick Geary, Robert Zoschke, Rod Clark, Rosebud Magazine, Thomas Christensen, Thomas Fuchs

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• The Tiger’s Wedding

  The Tiger’s Wedding
  James Dante
  Martin Sisters Publishing 2013

  Reviewed by Bob Wake

  

  “Moments of conventional bliss had a way of eluding me,” declares Jake St. Gregory, a young American accountant from dreamland, U.S.A.—Burbank, California—working as an English teacher in Seoul, South Korea. Jake, the 30-year-old protagonist and narrator of James Dante’s wry and wise debut novel, The Tiger’s Wedding, will thoroughly test the multicultural limits of convention and bliss by the finish of his tale.

  There’s a tangled romance at the heart of The Tiger’s Wedding, with Jake falling in love with a married Korean woman, an aspiring musician with two young children. Dante finds enough page-turning complications and believable twists to both keep the plot percolating efficiently and to largely sidestep cliches. He grounds his story in solid characterization and skillful depictions of cultural and familial conflicts.

  

  It’s no surprise to learn from his author’s bio that Dante, a Northern Californian by way of New York, spent time teaching in South Korea. The novel is lovingly awash in quotidian details of cuisine and landscape, as well as nightlife high and low. The story avoids lapsing into travelogue while at the same time taking Western readers to locations we’d be curious to see ourselves. Whether or not The Tiger’s Wedding was completed before the viral K-pop YouTube sensation of “Gangnam Style,” Dante’s description of the song’s locale provides an interesting gloss on its Day-Glo milieu:

  We rode the subway into Gangnam, a chic section of Seoul. Even below ground, imitation Renaissance statues squirted water into flood-lit pools. Walking from the subway stop to street level involved passing boutiques … I had heard the stories about young Gangnam males who caroused in the nightclubs and eateries, terrorizing the staff and lighting cigarettes with money.

  More ominous is Jake’s darkly funny visit to the Korean Demilitarized Zone with a photojournalist (a sardonic American from Columbus, Ohio whose character functions at times as Jake’s bad conscience):

  On the other side of the border stood a 500-foot flagpole, which supported a 600-pound North Korean flag. Even with the steady wind, the flag hung limp from its own weight. Amplified rhetoric echoed from the enemy side. Through powerful loudspeakers, North Korea continuously reminded the Southern troops that the North had created a Workers’ Paradise. Big deal. In the South they drove Hyundais and listened to rap.

  Dante’s strongest creation is the character of Jae-Min, the 33-year-old working mother and abused wife whom Jake befriends and whose life becomes increasingly enmeshed with his own. Jae-Min’s complexity keeps the story off-balance in a compelling manner: she can’t comfortably resolve the multiple conflicts complicating her life. Dante is at his best in showing us her resilience and allowing us, along with Jake, to second-guess—often with shameful inaccuracy—Jae-Min’s behavior.

  Labor protests and a growing anti-Americanism in Seoul heighten the climactic sections of the novel. (“Lines of riot police, resembling a thousand Darth Vaders, pushed back with even greater force, knocking people to the ground.”) There’s much to recommend here, from the novel’s careful attention to detail and the shifting allegiances of its characters, to its cultural and political backdrop. The strong excerpts from The Tiger’s Wedding that ran in Rosebud Magazine have more than fulfilled their promise.

  April 1, 2013

  Burbank, Darth Vader, Demilitarized Zone, Gangnam Style, James Dante, Korea, Martin Sisters Publishing, Rosebud Magazine, Seoul

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• Summer of the Cinetherapist

  

  My story “Summer of the Cinetherapist” was a runner-up in the 2011 Wisconsin People & Ideas short story contest and subsequently appeared in Rosebud Magazine (Autumn 2011). Now it’s a CBR Press ebook single. And for a limited time it’s a free download from Amazon. (Otherwise, 99 cents.) I’ve outfitted the text with a handful of public domain film stills courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Curious fact: While films and publicity photos typically fall under copyright law, pre-1964 movie trailers often don’t, nor do trailer screenshots. Wikimedia, to my surprise and delight, has public domain trailer screenshots from movies that are integral to “Summer of the Cinetherapist,” such as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Mildred Pierce, and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. Voilà: an illustrated edition of “Summer of the Cinetherapist.” Enjoy!

  August 28, 2012

  Bob Wake, CBR Press, Rosebud Magazine, Summer of the Cinetherapist, Wisconsin People & Ideas

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• Fisherman’s Beach publicity tour

  

  Two great opportunities to read excerpts from our CBR Press 50th Anniversary ebook edition of George Vukelich’s Wisconsin novel, Fisherman’s Beach. First, you can read an excerpt from Chapter Eight in the Spring 2012 issue of Rosebud, available in bookstores or for purchase online. It’s one of our favorite chapters from the novel: 12-year-old Reuben LeMere receives a .22 caliber rifle for his birthday and quickly graduates from tin-can target practice to irresponsibly shooting at seagulls on the Lake Michigan beach. He earns the wrath of an irate lighthouse keeper and, worse, a stern lesson from his father, the book’s central moral force, Old Man LeMere.

  

  Next, you can check out the May 2012 issue of Madison Magazine, now on newsstands and online. In addition to Wisconsin State Journal columnist Doug Moe’s Foreword to Fisherman’s Beach, you’ll also find (exclusive to Madison Magazine online) a lengthy excerpt from Chapter Ten. It’s another one of the novel’s highlights: 34-year-old Germaine LeMere, home from the Second World War, joins three of his brothers on the family’s fishing tug for a day of harvesting lake trout. Sibling tensions mount between Germaine and his brother Roger over hot-button topics like who’s better suited to run the ailing Old Man’s fishing business and, perhaps the hottest hot-button topic of all: Germaine’s former sweetheart, Ginny Dussault, who’s now dating Roger.

  April 21, 2012

  Cambridge Book Review Press, CBR Press, Doug Moe, Fisherman’s Beach, George Vukelich, Madison Magazine, Rosebud Magazine, Wisconsin State Journal

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