The count-down is complete; the line has served its time. In this spirit of millennial closure, the Winter 1999/2000 issue
of ebr will be the last written under the constraint of periodical publication.
2010
04-03-2010
alphabetical
Abish's Africa Abish's Alphabetical Africa is pondered here, in a critifiction by Louis Bury. Bury's text is written - like
the novel itself - under constraint: each critical query begins with a new letter of the alphabet. Culminating in "Zeugma,"
the essay explores the poetics of Abish's linguistic experiment from somewhere close to the inside. (Doug Nufer's Negativeland
gets a similar - though more subtle - treatment in another Bury piece.)
04-01-2010
negative
Absences, Negations, Voids Examining Doug Nufer's Negativeland, a constraint-based text, Louis Bury adopts the same constraint as the novel
- an approach NOT dissimilar to his treatment of Abish's Alphabetical Africa. In this case, the constraint is
a prohibition against sentences lacking "some form of negation" - a commitment not unlike the affirmation of negativity.
The Dialect of the Tribe This is a reprint of Mathews' short story which originally appeared in The Human Country: New and Collected Stories
(Dalkey Archive 2002).
09-29-2006
efficient
Fearful Symmetries Harry Mathews writes of the inherent difficulties in translation - especially the translation of his own work.
2004
06-27-2004
stuttered
Verse in Reverse On the occasion of the 2003 Fitzpatrick O'Dinn Award publication, Alan Sondheim asks some questions of formally constrained
literature. The more strict the constraints, the more open, free, and plentiful the questions.
05-25-2004
festivarian
&Now Conference Review Late Breaking: William Gillespie, Scott Rettberg, and Rob Wittig post from Notre Dame University on the &Now festival of writers
and writing.
Tomorrow Ltd. Thoughts on the debut novel by Alex Shakar.
09-01-2002
ghostly
The Present of Fiction Recent fiction by Curtis White, Alex Shakar, Michael Martone, and others read through the lens of Gertrude Stein and Wittgenstein.
Not Browsing but Reading: Magazines and Books Online Perusing websites pertaining to literary matters, Eye magazine cites HTML's "gaptoothed rawness" as a hindance to readability
in ebr (prior to the journal's redesign).
Writing Under Constraint ebr10, a satisfyingly even number published at the turn of the millennium, seemed at the time like the right occasion for
calling an end to issues altogether. In the event, we would not manage to eliminate issues until February 2002 - that palindromic
month and year, as satisfying in its way as the y2k.
The Education of Adams (Henry) / ALAMO Paul Braffort studies constrained writing from Henry Adams to Braffort's own ALAMO project, and presents his findings in the
form of a Triolet (between 1999 and 2000 words)
Fed Ex Un Ltd Jan Baetens reviews the Raymond Federman Recyclopedia, a book whose humour - and evident bad taste - raise it above its own
formidable constraints.