Hot on the heels of For­rest Gander’s appre­ci­a­tion of Eliot Weinberger’s An Ele­men­tal Thing comes this letter* in the new Harper’s:

Eliot Weinberger’s essay “Man­daeans,” which appeared in the May 2007 issue of Harper’s Mag­a­zine, con­tains the fol­low­ing incor­rect state­ments that vilify Mandaeans:

They dis­like the Jews, whom they call “an evil nation” founded by the rene­gade Man­daeans Abra­ham and Moses, a people “who do not agree on a single utter­ance,” who cir­cum­cise with swords and sprin­kle the blood on them­selves, whose hus­bands aban­don their wives and lie down with each other.

They say the Chris­tians have secret rites in which they wor­ship a female donkey with three legs.

They dis­like the Zoroas­tri­ans, who sleep with their moth­ers and sis­ters and eat the dead, who take vows of silence and abort their babies.

These alle­ga­tions are with­out foun­da­tion. Man­daeans hold no such views. Man­daeans do not enter­tain any hos­til­ity toward Jews, Chris­tians, or Zoroas­tri­ans. Man­daeans have noth­ing but good­will toward Jews, Chris­tians, and Zoroastrians.

Nor is it cor­rect to say, as Wein­berger does, that “each year they have a cer­e­mony to honor the Egyp­tians who drowned when the Red Sea closed over them as they pur­sued Moses and the Jews.” This state­ment implies that Man­daeans strongly sym­pa­thize with a tyrant who was pur­su­ing people who were escap­ing from slav­ery. Man­daeans do not hold such views. In fact, the annual com­mem­o­ra­tion of Nuh relates to those who drowned in Noah’s flood.

Some fol­low­ers of John the Bap­tist
via the Internet

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*Sub­scrip­tion required.

For­rest Gander has a nice (re)consideration of Eliot Weinberger’s An Ele­men­tal Thing, “the best book by our best living lit­er­ary essayist,” over at Har­riet. (My con­tri­bu­tion to the “scant attention” the book received after its pub­li­ca­tion may be read here.)

And while I’m at it, may I rec­om­mend Pico Iyer’s essay on Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leop­ard in the cur­rent NYRB? It’s a sen­si­tive and thought­ful piece, and useful not least as anti­dote to the clat­ter and in(s)anity of the cur­rent season. (I’ll post a link when the NYRB site starts work­ing again.)

Chicago Review’s Autumn issue (53:2/3) is back from the press and avail­able now for only twelve dol­lars. Buy a copy today!

POETRY in the issue includes Book V of Ronald Johnson’s Radi os (enti­tled “The Book of Adam”); “Rising, Falling, Hovering,” the second half of CD Wright’s long poem about the Iraq war (the first half of which was pub­lished in CR 51:3); and poems by Larissa Szpor­luk, William Fuller, Sarah Gri­d­ley, Roberto Har­ri­son, Mark Tardi, John Peck, Erín Moure, Oana Avasili­chioaei, and Elisa Sampedrin.

FIC­TION includes five short sto­ries by Peter Markus and Jede­diah Berry’s “Minus, His Heart.”

CRIT­I­CISM in the issue includes a defense of real­ism by Georges Perec and a long con­sid­er­a­tion of Hart Crane by Allen Grossman.

The issue also includes a three-​part con­ver­sa­tion on gender in con­tem­po­rary poetry, with an essay by Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young, a response by Jen­nifer Ashton, and a note by Joshua Kotin and Robert P. Baird.

REVIEWS in the issue include:

The autumn 2007 issue of Chicago Review is at press and avail­able to pre-​order.

(The issue will be mailed in early October.)

The issue fea­tures: the second half of “Rising, Hov­er­ing, Falling,” C.D. Wright’s long poem about the Iraq war; Book V of Ronald Johnson’s Radi os; an arti­cle on fem­i­nism and inno­v­a­tive poetry by Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young, and a response from Jen­nifer Ashton; essays by Georges Perec (on real­ism) and Allen Gross­man (on Hart Crane). Plus the next install­ment of Kent Johnson’s twelve-​part crit­i­cal novella, a review of J.H. Prynne’s “To Pollen.” And much much much more.

The full table of con­tents is posted as a pdf on CR’s web­site and is sum­ma­rized below.

Pre-​order the issue now!