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Popular Culture Review
our relationships with mountains through history, culminating with our
contemporary sense of oneness and acceptance of the mountain environment. He
must be right. I'm looking at Red Rock Canyon from my window as I write.
Many of us began to have some renewed hope for journalism as
reporters dropped their seeming objectivity and became involved with the
situation during Katrina. In ‘The New Journalism of the Sixties: Reevaluating
Objective Reality and Conventional Journalistic Practice,” Dennis Russell
explains that “only by using entire scenes, extended dialogue, the point of view
of characters, and interior monologue, could writers like Didion, Wolfe,
Thompson, Mailer, and Herr attempt to come to terms with the widening social
chasms of the Sixties.” He gives us an insightful look at the time and
practitioners; we can only hope for a new group for our chaotic time.
In "When Fiction Becomes Reality: Authorial Voice in The Door in the
Floor, Secret Window, and Swimming Pooh Jan Whitt examines these three
films, all drawn from literature, dealing, as she says, “with the role of
imagination in story telling, with distinctions between genius and madness in the
creative process, and with meta-fiction, or the way in which literary and visual
texts about languages and images comment upon themselves."
Finally, we have William Petty's last essay, “Narrative Transformation:
Jonathan Lethem's Men and Cartoons Comic Books and Geek Culture,” a
marvelously insightful look into just that. Sadly, William died unexpectedly
shortly after his piece was accepted for inclusion in this journal. He had
published three other articles with us, and, with his twin brother John, faithfully
attended our conferences. We will miss him.
Nuts and Bolts
If you missed Laurens Tan's "Risk as Pleasure” article in a previous
issue, you will find it in a slightly different incarnation in the Appendix. Some
errors had crept into the earlier version that he wanted to correct, which he did.
So here it is.
You may have noticed that we have begun to run book reviews. Here is
a wonderful chance to have your book reviewed or to review one that you think
we should know about. Query first if you have a read a book that you feel is
appropriate; chances are we will be interested.
PCR has a new address. It’s [email protected]. This
is the perfect time to remind you that the journal is now all-electronic: all
requests and submissions are done through email.
Felicia F. Campbell
Editor, Popular Culture Review
[email protected]