Tenbones’ Game – Dir: Efraim Kinsey

A Meditation on the Game of Life
Review by Alex Ricciardi

Following in the footsteps of recent documentaries Wordplay & King Me, Tenbones’ Game is a film about a strategy game. But, while crosswords and checkers are fairly well known, this film’s eponymous subject is only played in a small region of Southern Iowa.

I won’t go into the details on how Tenbones’ Game is played, because one of the joys of watching the film is the way in which it reveals the rules. The film is focused on Kennedy Tenbones, the grandson of the game’s inventor. Now in his eighties, Kennedy teaches the game to novices, whose numbers are dwindling. In an age of electronics and digital media, there’s no time for something like Tenbones’ Game. The film reveals the rules of the game gradually, and with each new revelation, we learn more about Kennedy’s life, and struggle to keep the game alive.

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Starting now, Literation is open to reader reviews. Do you love independent and obscure cinema and books? Then don’t hesitate to write us a review of an old or new book or movie. Just mail any reviews to this address: reviews@literationreviews.com. We can’t wait to hear from you!

One Love Letter To Another – Charlie Lerstner

Another Near-Miss From Yarn-Spinner Lerstner
Review by Alex Ricciardi

Charlie Lerstner has a fascinating problem: He’s able to write two-thirds of a great book. His first novel, Zero Miles As The Crow Flies, was the story of a man’s spiritual awakening. A page-turner, it was a surprisingly solid effort from a previously unpublished author—that is, until you reached page 180. The Banker Won’t Return, his second work, similarly faltered near its climax, and left many readers (this reviewer included) scratching their heads as to why Lerstner would end his story that way. The same problem plagues One Love Letter To Another, a book whose first half is as good as anything written in the past fifteen years.

Love Letter is the story of Audrey Downin, a wealthy heiress who hasn’t worked a day in her life. She does not, however, flaunt her wealth. She is not a jet-setter, a sharp dresser, a wild partygoer or drug user. Audrey prefers to sit at home and read. In fact, she almost never leaves the house, and has never left the country. When her extensive home library is exhausted, however, she is forced to go exploring outside her home, searching for something interesting.

Soulever – Dir: Garrison West

An Uplifting Glimpse Into Three Intertwined Lives
Review by Alex Ricciardi

From the first frame of Garrison West’s experimental drama, Soulever, you know you’re in for something outside of the ordinary. We see the moon, hanging in a city sky at midnight. The camera holds. Suddenly, a body falls into frame. It is a hobo, his clothes tattered, hair matted against his face. He is dead. His body rings the screen like a corona around the moon. Slowly, a light descends from the sky, growing until it reaches us. The camera pulls impossibly far back as we zoom and swerve through the streets, until we are looking at the entire city skyline. A bright light shoots up from near a building, bisecting the frame, and a face is just visible, almost completely transparent, each eye in one of the frame’s halves. A moody orchestral score lulls us all through these shots, and then suddenly crescendos, cuing a fade to black.

From here, the films slows down, and begins a slow boil back to the energy it started with. We meet the three main characters: Waldo (Chester Woolworth), a professional bodybuilder; Erasmus (Cary Fawxner), an elevator operator, and Keith (Jacob Leisner), an angel. By choosing unknown actors to play these parts, West is able to make us truly believe in these characters. He takes his time to introduce them, meticulously setting up shots that show them in their own prisons: the bars and cold metal of machines at the gym; the sliding, latticed door over the elevator; even Keith’s own wings shroud his face, and seem to hold him captive.

The Politics of the Back Porch – Deborah Hoskensin

Review by Robyn Curtis

Deborah Hoskensin’s newest book, The Politics of the Back Porch, begins with a whimper and ends with a cry for help. Although her two previous works, The Hellride of the Archangel and A Farmer’s Dream, were both stunning displays of literary agility and emotional whirlwinds, her newest attempt falls flat, and then sinks further in shame. The supposed sequel to A Farmer’s Dream, Politics lacks the tension of the struggle for a woman to find her place among men in rabbit farming, and her main character, Eloise Smitherton, seems to have lost the verve that made her trials all the more gripping and her triumphs all the sweeter.

The book opens with Eloise contemplating the success of her rabbit farm while gazing at the statue of her beloved Poe, an American Fuzzy Lop that inspired Eloise to challenge the monopoly on rabbit farming in Montana. The prose, although full of lovely descriptions and wonderfully crafted, cannot relieve the stark sterility of the book and the wandering, disjointed plot that becomes more and more cumbersome with every passing chapter. Eloise teeters between chasing love or career; farming rabbits or, now that she’s proven her point, something more humane; going to the side of her dying grandmother or staying with her cancer-ridden rabbit stud, Eliot–difficulties that Hoskensin is unable to resolve after 200 chapters of effort.

Adolf at the Abyss – Jöns Borgström

A Bold Vision From Sweden’s Master Storyteller
Review by Alex Ricciardi

“The stoic dead man with the mustache stood alone at the edge of the precipice.”

So begins Borgström’s controversial novel about Adolf Hitler’s journey through the afterlife—and to eventual redemption. Although the subject matter seems ridiculous and borderline offensive, Borgström has managed to turn in a modern day morality play that transcends its political issues.

Borgström spends little time detailing Hitler’s life pre-death—we are all dreadfully aware of many of those circumstances. Instead, he opts to let us into the thoughts and feelings of a man, who, broke and defeated, committed suicide, just days after his birthday.

Requiem for God – John Hopperfield

Hopperfield’s Masterpiece
Review by Luke Magill

To be honest, I was somewhat skeptical when I picked up a book by the title Requiem for God, but a long Thanksgiving weekend in Oregon saw little else to do. Besides, I was interested. What type of melodrama resides within a story of this title? Whose dreams lie therein? Once I started reading my doubts evaporated completely. Truly, this is yet another masterwork swept away by the popular villainy of modern literature.

Needless to say, the works of John Hopperfield were, at that point, completely unknown to me. While the man was obviously a writer of great talent, few of his works deserve a place among the masterpieces of the English language. This is mostly due to the lack of symbolic coherence in many of his works. However, Requiem for God certainly shows how trends can belie facts. This work is a successful culmination of his previous failed attempts.

Rotten Cushions – Horatio Clemens

Literation’s First Review
Review by Alex Ricciardi

Time has been kind to Horatio Clemens. Originally known for his sprawling epics on warring nations, the wordsmith turned his gaze inward for his fourth book, Rotten Cushions. On the eve of its tenth anniversary, I invite you to revisit this saga of a small family, a deformed son, and the way his existence ripples throughout the community. The wars of Clemens’ earlier novels remain intact, but this time they are fought with words, on the battlefield of the human soul.

Simon Cantwell, the book’s protagonist, is a young boy who is born with only one eye. Where his other should be, there exists only a gaping black hole, wrinkled and puckering. As Simon’s life wears on, the hole slowly grows bigger, consuming more and more of his face. The book follows his life, with a specific focus on his interaction with his family, and the way his life changes as those who love him leave him. It is, in essence, a chamber drama and bildungsroman rolled into one.

Welcome.

Welcome to the opening of “Literation,” a book and movie review site for the discerning literature lover. Look for many reviews to follow in the next several days.