Artwork by Ira Joel Haber
From Tom Dooley, Editor
Some numbers and names...
I'm proud to say that this issue, our fifty-first, commences Eclectica Magazine's second decade online.
The accompanying artwork comes from sketchbooks created by Ira Joel Haber, a New Yorker who has been making small scale sculptures and miniature environments since 1969. Many of these pieces are dated from the 1970s, and it's possible to make out the lines of the notebook paper upon which they were painted, penciled, or otherwise created.
Our Spotlight Author is fiction writer, ad-man, and newspaper reporter Paul Silverman, whose story "The Home Front" takes us back to the night the Korean War officially ended, when the proprietor, employees, and patrons of an all-night New York deli encounter a drunken, enraged soldier bent on destruction. It's a dense and kinetic tale, beautifully told.
Jennifer Finstrom brings us her most packed issue yet since taking over the Poetry Editing reins, with work from eighteen different poets, including Robert James Berry, back for his fifth appearance in Eclectica.
The Reviews and Interviews section is overflowing with interesting stuff. Ann Skea, whose piece on Peter Ackroyd's Blake graced our very first issue back in 1996, is back in force with five new reviews. Review Editor Colleen Mondor has provided a stellar group of reviewers and reviews, along with her own incisive survey of twenty books ranging from tales for young children to nonfiction accounts of life in Iraq and Afghanistan. And with his seventh installment, Scott Malby brings the number of online lit sites he has quickly and dirtily reviewed to thirty-five.
Interview Editor Elizabeth Glixman switched things up a bit by going out and recruiting a posse of five interviewers. The result: more interviews, wonderful variety of subjects and perspectives, good stuff.
Don't overlook the Salon, where the venerable Thomas J. Hubschman, editor of Gowanus, has another thoughtful essay, and where Stanley Jenkins' piece about the passing of his father-in-law is one of the most moving things I've ever read.
(meanwhile, Paul Sampson just came in with a late addition of his own, along with ten (!) pieces for the Nonfiction section—looks like I've got some more HTML work to do...)
I'd like to offer a special thanks to our Copy Editor, Pamela Mackey, who earned every bit of her year-end bonus, corner office, and company car.
Finally, thank you for checking out Eclectica. It's been an infinitely rewarding enterprise so far, and I'm looking forward to 2007 and the next ten years.
