Vol. 1 / Issue 1
Une revue littéraire et culturelle bilingue
Vol. 2 / Issue 1
Commentary
Vol. 2 / Issue 1
January 04, 2024
Christian Fennell
Editor-in-chief,
The Nelligan Review
Has the World Gone Ft. Lauderdale Saturday Night Boardwalk Crazy in Our Give Me Another Painkiller—Now Please, Alienation?
... Or /
The Café Orr
She woke—but who was she? some innocence of newness, I suppose, this thought jumping into my mind at The Café Orr in Montreal while drinking with Josip Novakovich, a master of short stories; of first person; of writing about his life. Camus comes to mind: “The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.” And this is Josip; this Josip writing. His ability to marry a sense of the improbability of life with ... ‘well, of course, it happened.’
With the release of his latest book, Vignettes, we begin to talk about the 70s, his rock ‘n’ roll years, and me, just a kid viewing them in real-time. They were the last free decade. That’s what I think, and he says, he’s not so sure about that. Another pause in our conversation, and that girl, she’s back, and it’s perfectly quiet and perfectly still where she is—a forest somewhere, the air holding a scent of some deep wanting. Some previous unknowingness. She sat up, covered in leaves, and she looked at the forest, magical in its holding of her, and she looked to the reaching of the trees, their crowns just within sight, the sun there, breaking through to her, and it felt as if she thought she was standing beneath a canopy of new life; new days, days that just might hold the possibly of hope lasting. Like a wish made
somewhere, at some time. But no, probably not, and now Josip, he’s telling me, it’s a common enough thought, when thinking about the years of one’s childhood, to associate this time in life with freedom. I guess, or was it just the parents I had? My mother, an academic, who, although she cared for her kids, was occupied with other things. Her work, mostly. Fair enough. And Jake? Well, he was something else altogether, an old-time editor: Irish whiskey, cigars, and a blue grease pencil. He was a great guy, I tell Josip. Who? Jake. Yeah? Yeah. But when he’d had enough, that was it, the belt would come off, and he’d say, “Don’t move, I don’t want hit your kidneys.” And I remember thinking to myself: What the fuck was a kidney? I didn’t know. Josip’s laughing, and I’m laughing, now, too, and that girl, she’s there again, in my mind, standing, brushing leaves away from herself and noticing a small heart-shaped golden locket with a thin gold chain wrapped around her left hand. She touched it, the smoothness of it. There was a latch, and she pressed it, but it wouldn’t open. She looked around her, and she wondered again, where was she? She stood, touching her hair, as if measuring the length of it. She looked again at the locket and she untangled it from her hand, watching it twirl in the light, and she said to the trees; to the light; to the ground holding below her, where’d it come from, and why do I have it?
​
And I thought, why was this unfolding in my mind now, taking up space, when I had the commentary for The Nelligan to write, the deadline coming up fast. I should be thinking about that—about art, about how more art = a greater tolerance, and backing the truck up to the thought of art as an expression of—'I was here,’ and the reaching to the meaning of that in a place where there is no answers. And that’s the important part, the unknowingness of it, binding us together, and stopping us from tipping over into full-on crazy like a Ft. Lauderdale boardwalk on a Saturday night.
​
Sheila Watson, on her book, The Double Hook: “It’s about how people are driven, how if they have no art, how if they have no tradition, how if they have no ritual, they are driven in one of two ways, either towards violence or towards insensibility - if they have no mediating rituals which manifest themselves in what I suppose we call art forms."
Violence, or insensibility. The reasons why, according to Watson, we need our art forms.
Art as reaching, expanding us, making us more.
`
The girl was walking among the endless rows of towering trees, and she told herself, I’m not frightened, walking in a forest all alone, even though she did not know who she was, what her name was, or why she was there.
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As kids in the 70s, I tell Josip, we had hippies as elementary school teachers that were clearly stoned, and to my memory, stoned well, while listening to The Rolling Stones at the back of the classroom with headphones.
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He clearly likes the thought of this, and he smiles.
​
Was it surprising, our generation immediately following the hippies, a generation as young kids that watched everything turn chemical, had instilled in us a spirit of anything goes? The adults in the room basically having had the keys to the future taken from them by the now fading-out, becoming jaded, hippies. Happy enough, I suppose, this older generation, of committing to jumping into this new pool of disposable everything to make some money. Of course, by then, for many, the drugs themselves had become the thing, the limits being pushed beyond any previous known boundaries—Hello, 27 Club, and to this day, I do think that if you can make it to 28, you’ll be okay. It was quite something, open classrooms, stoned teachers, acid rain, the mass arrival of plastic, and fast food, without the knowledge yet, or means, of managing any of it. It was wild, and it was unruly, and it was a hot mess, this imperfect blooming of a disposable society.
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And it was freedom, too, until it wasn’t, which, of course, gave us the 80s—the lets tame it all down and just look anything but real because honestly who wants to die at 27? or to have to think about protecting your kidneys?
​
Unlike these times now that are the times of a Gregory Crewdson photograph with torrents of information washing over us; washing over this overwhelming alienation, for many. Too many. Insensibility, or violence; Sheila, make it both; these mass shootings; this mass overdosing, driven from a different place, and nothing ever seen before, in its origins.
​
That girl—yet, it’s not a girl, now, it’s a boy, the same age, a boy fully formed in his boyness, and not partially formed, which is really quite something, He, too, was walking in that forest, a golden locket in his left hand.
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And the girl, in a mist, walking slower, careful of her footing. What was that? and she looked around, seeing countless numbers of small young children, just like her, dressed in thin and ragged clothing. Appearing. Disappearing. And now adults, of all kinds. Some holding in their arms, still and quiet babies. It saddened her, but she was not frightened, and she continued to walk.
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More children.
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More adults, with babies held in their arms, that did not make a sound.
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She came to a fork in the forest path and did not know which way to go. A large blackbird sitting on a branch of a tree said to her, do you not see the direction the tree is pointing? And sure enough, the entire tree was formed in the shape of an arrowhead, pointing the way. It’s a moon tree, said the bird, and it flew away.
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Thank you, bird, said girl.
​
I look at Josip, typing on his laptop, and I tell him, I miss the unpredictability of that time, the wide-openness of no one really knowing what the fuck they were doing, or why, or that, being uninformed as a society to that degree, gave birth to an absurdity that was the first, if not possibly, the only truth, from which, I’m convinced, a certain greatness was incubated that became the tech boom, should you have been fortunate enough to make it past 27, with your kidneys intact.
Looking up from his laptop, Josip pauses, and he says, IDK, in the 70s, I just wanted to play some rock ‘n’ roll.
Right, I say, let’s just get back to that, easier days with sounds from the radio bouncing off country neon.
​
The edge of the forest was in sight, and there, in that place, the girl saw a light, of its own, or so it seemed to her. Standing in the intensity of the light was a very large man, his back to her. She walked from the forest, and as she did, she looked to her left, where she saw the young boy exiting the forest at the very same time as she did.
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Walking their own paths, they met at the man, each of them standing on their side of him, who did not look down at either one, but instead, continued to look at that which was before him.
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The children looked, too, at the black and scorched earth. The slow swirling grey ash of what once was.
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The man looked at the girl. You’re here?
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Yes, she said.
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He looked at the boy, and you?
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Yes, said the boy.
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Good, said the man. Shall we go?
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Where? said the boy.
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Home, of course, and he took their hands and turned and walked away from that old dead world, the grey ash of yesterday still falling.
The girl, feeling the golden locket against her chest, put her hand to it.
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Next to her, so, too, did the boy. He stopped and he looked at the girl. What do you think is inside?
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The girl stopped and looked at the boy. I don’t know.
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The man stopped.
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The girl, smiling, said, maybe one day we’ll find out?
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The boy, looking at the girl, realized for the very first time, he was lost to the depth of beauty in her beautiful green eyes, and he said, yes, I think we will.
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Good, she said, and they took the man’s hands again and continued to walk, the golden lockets against their chests, shining in the light of everyone’s new day.
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More art = a greater tolerance, that’s what I’m thinking, as we exit The Café Orr, our breath before us in the cold, and we need it now, more than ever, in these new days soon to come, that need not be any longer a world gone Ft. Lauderdale Saturday night boardwalk crazy in our give me another painkiller—now please, alienation. Fuck that.
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Art is the answer.
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More art, please.
more art = a greater tolerance
Christian Fennell
Editor-in-chief,
The Nelligan Review
Vol. 1 / Issue 4
September 18, 2023
Days of Summer
Ilike the days of summer, not that they’re lazier, as much as they seem to be easier days, less constrained and concentrated. Easier in a sense of easier to forget the troubles of the world, and your own, for that matter, at least, for a while. Troubles of the world that remain constant: poverty; child poverty, war, the weak, self-absorbed thinking of the rich and powerful, to the more current troubles of the world: Trump, the RNC and DNC, the Ukraine/Russian war, Elon Musk. People tend to travel more, to get away and see things, which is a form of education, of course, always a good thing, for education helps erode ignorance, and coupled with greed, they are the two biggest enemies of the world, in our time; in any time. As Nat and I did this summer, taking a road trip through the rolling hills of Prince Edward County, the vineyards, the fine tables of Picton, the beaches and their grassy, breezy sandbanks, the world’s largest baymouth barrier dune formation. In the 1,000 Island district of the St. Lawrence River, I took a stroll, wanting to stretch my legs, and I came upon a young boy and an old man fishing, and I smiled, thinking of my own time as a young boy fishing on the banks of a river with my grandfather. A warm breeze came up, and that young boy and I watched the old man close his eyes and lean his head back, warming his face to it, and he smiled. It was then I imagined that young boy watching the old man’s time drifting before us on that lazy, shaded river, real and gone, and there again, for that old man to pluck at and say—see, it’s right there, still all right there, when I was just boy, like you. And in this, there would be contentment, without meaning, in the honest days of a life. In the days of a life still to come. As if in a dream that could only ever be found by a young boy climbing up through the worn buttonhole of an old man’s time, much like I did as a young boy fishing next to my grandfather. Thirty-eight million people, I remember him saying, while staring at the river. I didn’t know then, as I do now, he meant the second world war, and all the people that had died in the name of fascism, the current riding over the backs of those dead, like it was the dead of the first world war, in the days of my grandfather’s youth. And as a young man, on the heels of trade union bashing, the collapsing of markets, the Great Depression, and all those years of human suffering. As a married man with a child, his five years with The Queen’s Own Rifles, the second world war. The current riding over all of it, indestructible and always moving, a current with not only the ability to erode rocks, but also, the bricks placed in its path by the hands of us. I watched that old man look down at that boy, and I heard him say, it’s always been there, never-ending, and it never will not be. What? I heard myself whispering. A simple and always known thing, he said. I waited. Our wanting—reaching, to the need of a just society. That’s the current? Yes, he said, that’s the current. Never-ending.
Yesterday Germany, today America, and tomorrow, most certainly it will be somewhere else, but none of that will ever stop the current of an easy, flowing river, that is our need of a just society.
To all those suffering in the Ukraine right now, may victory be yours, and may it come soon.
more art = a greater tolerance
Christian Fennell
Editor-in-chief
The Nelligan Review
Vol. 1 / Issue 3
June 19, 2023
Cormac McCarthy Has Died
- More McCarthy
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And so we say goodbye to the American writer Cormac McCarthy, July 20, 1933 - June 13, 2023. A
writer who did not receive a single royalty check from one of his first four books, over a period of twenty-eight years. And yet, he kept on … why? How? Did he know he was a writer future students of American literature would look at a map and draw a line through the names, Twain, Melville, Faulkner – McCarthy? He must have, how else can one keep going—keep paying such a steep price without the ultimate faith in oneself? Impossible. As to the how, the singular direction of his writing points us back to his faith, as he simply continued to drill down into Cormac McCarthy writing – More McCarthy. For this was not a writer of a MFA program striving toward a pixelated excellence. A writer prepared to workshop his manuscripts and assign them to a slush pile marked consensus art. No. He was an outsider, until he wasn’t, but long enough—twenty-eight years long enough, to become a writer that could write Blood Meridian. Could it be possible any other way? We haven’t seen evidence of it yet, so, no … we only have this history, pointing the way, a way that requires the ultimate faith in oneself, without wavering, no matter what. As writers, we might not like hearing this, but then again, we must not dislike it, either, for it just is, the price to be paid to write words that last. And I really don’t think it should be any other way. The ultimate faith, in oneself, that’s it, what we have – More McCarthy.
The Passenger
by Cormac McCarthy
Random House, 2022
A Review:
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A new McCarthy novel, The Passenger. His last. And what to make of it? “If we are not after essence, Squire, then what are we after? And I’ll defer to your view that we cannot uncover such a thing without putting our stamp upon it.” Which McCarthy does with The Passenger. Both things. Reaching to essence, while putting his stamp as a writer upon that searching.
Told from each of their perspectives, Bobby Western mourns the death (suicide) of his younger, schizophrenic sister, Alicia Western, while being pursued by the US government for a crime--possibly, that remains unknown—to us, if not, to him. Shadowing both of them is their father’s past as one of the architects of the atom bomb.
As always, a McCarthy novel is a joyful ride with words, and here, too, this is true. It is not in the storytelling that this book is a departure from his previous work, it is in the goals of the story itself, as if the story was in no need of its own form: the randomness of life lived within the realm of the unknown while studying its own refection of its own telling as the precision of mathematics and physics look on, unable to offer any relief. But then, a story of grief and loss is always a tragedy, for what we feel a loss for, we are less, it becoming our reality—the lessor of us. Which is this book—the acknowledgment of this. A book without a linear need—no cause and effect here. A book uncaring of the outcome, which is what? Quite simply, it is McCarthy saying, I am a writer, and after a life lived as a writer—asking question to which there are no answers, I still have no answers, and therefore, I am in no need, with this last book, of a form within which to put the pretext of an answer, or the need of a form building to an answer, and I shall not try. And he didn’t. And he did it well, freeing himself as a writer—giving himself permission, to reach to more, while being less, and becoming even more in the process. And it reads as if he knew this is what he was writing, and why, and most importantly, when. And I like that, and I tip my hat to him, for having the courage to go out this way.
McCarthy was often criticized for being a writer of male fiction. Or, his inability to write women well. True enough, and something he acknowledged himself. And so, it was with great joy, with this last book, discovering the wonderfully formed, transgender character, Debussy Fields. A shot at all those who choose to make ignorance and fear their companion. “He watched her until she was lost among the tourists. Men and women alike turning to look after her. He thought that God’s goodness appeared in strange places. Dont close your eyes.”
Nope. And thanks for the body of work, Cormac McCarthy. A life well lived.
more art = a greater tolerance
Vol. 1 / Issue 2
December 29, 2022
Christian Fennell
Editor-in-chief,
The Nelligan Review
2022: War Crimes
December 29, 2022: A good time to look back at the year that
was, and in doing so, there is, of course, Putin’s ‘Special Military Operation’ – or, his war crimes in Ukraine. As
of December 18, 2022 there were 10,229 Russian military personnel dead (Mediazona count). Approximately, according to the Ukrainian government, 12,500 Ukrainian military personnel and 4,000 Ukrainian civilians dead. That’s 26,729 people. Dead. And why? To satisfy the outsized, Soviétique dreams of a madman. How in 2022 can anyone—any country, think it is within the realm of acceptability to try and take over another sovereign country by force? How, in 2022, is this still tolerated by the international community? Yes, I want more to be done to put an end to this madness, because – 26,729 people dead. In the meantime, we have voices speaking out. We have artists. And this is where we need to look, in times like this—these expressions of resistance; of artists articulating, in different forms, what so many of us are feeling, especially those shouting loudest from within Ukraine and Russia—the necessary voices of defiance, much like 84-year-old Vladimir Ovchinnikov, profiled in our Art & Photography section of this issue. And so, we acknowledge, and we thank them, and may many more join them, in trying to bring an end to Putin, and his reign of tyranny.
There is, of course, Bansky, who has created seven new murals in Ukraine, including the capital Kyiv, the suburb of Irpin, and the town of Borodyanka—among the places hardest hit by Russian bombs.
Seth Globepainter, Paris
Special Artistic Operation, Bucharest
Stanislav Belovski, Bulgarian capital, Sofia
Hijack, War Child in Los Angeles, California
TUSE, PKM Gdansk Jasien
Corie Mattie and Juliano Trindade,
Los Angeles, California
Sasha Korban, Kyiv
1GoodHombre, Santa Monica, California
Moisey Bondarenko, frontlines Ukraine
1GoodHombre, Los Angeles, California
Bandit, Dress Me Up for Battle, Los Angeles, California
Street musicians, Kyiv
Sasha Korban, Milan
Justus Becker, Frankfurt
Vladimir Ovchinnikov, Borovsk, Russia
"But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power." - James Baldwin
For those who support Putin, or Russia, I can promise you this: you have forgotten what is worth fighting for. You have forgotten time.
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And all the dead.
For they now, too, reside in you.
Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times
more art = a greater tolerance
Vol. 1 / Issue 1
October 3, 2022
Christian Fennell
Editor-in-chief,
The Nelligan Review
Why Won't America Fix Itself?
Yes, the question is rhetorical, the hope of America actually doing this, that thought having left the building of reasonable expectations some time ago. But the why holds up, at least from a speculation point of view. It's not as if the issues that plague and hold America back aren't well known.
Yes, the question is rhetorical, the hope of America actually doing this, that thought having left the building of reasonable expectations some time ago. But the why holds up, at least from a speculation point of view. It's not as if the issues that plague and hold America back aren't well known.
​
And even more frustrating, the answers to these issues are also widely known. There's any number of countries, right now, that are progressing in healthy, free market, democratic ways, devoid of high rates of poverty, economic policies fueling unhealthy levels of income inequality that strangle the flow of capital, healthcare systems that work—and help, without bankrupting people, education systems, meant to just that—to educate, publicly, equally. And then, of course, there's the social side of things, politicians trying to legislate morality. The promotion of 'family values,’ the kind that prevents your straight white child from walking into a public washroom and coming upon a she/her trans person and having their fresh young DNA altered in unimaginable ways, forever. What books are appropriate to read, which aren't. The bible—not science. Abortion, a greater issue beyond who you are. Etc.
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power." Franklin D. Roosevelt , April 29, 1938. And that’s as good a definition of fascism as any, and important to understand, when viewing America today. Thank you, Franklin.
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When a former President (Jimmy Carter) publicly states this (September 2017), you have to figure the cat is pretty much all the way out of the bag: “I would say that we’ve become kind of more of an oligarchy than we have a democracy, now. The rich people and the powerful people in our country decide a lot of who gets the nomination and therefore who is elected to office—not just presidents but senators and governors and Congress members.” And that was in 2017. Hello—it just keeps getting worse, not better. Not yet.
Without the working principal of the ‘will of the people,’ there can be no working democracy. There can be no American Dream. For what is the American Dream, if not the will of the people operating within the framework of a system that creates and promotes social mobility. And today, in America, social mobility is dead.
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Back to the question, why won't America fix itself? In what other field of enterprise, be it medicine, accounting, law, business, does accountability not matter? Since 1980, where the road starts that has lead us to where we are today, there have only been two parties in power. Two parties responsible for the current state of affairs. And we'll stop right there, and say this: save the red/blue finger pointing, it’s tired, and it’s boring. Not to mention, not accurate. And that is, part of the answer, too, of why won't America fix itself. There has been no reversal of public policy that would have, at the very least, delayed, if not deterred America from this march toward fascism. For fascism is nothing more than an ultimate form of self-interest. It is, the entitlement of the entitled, protected and perpetuated. And like moths to the glass of a light at night that cuts to the bone, each day, more and more, in too many places, for too long, populism grows from under this: The asking of the right questions, and reaching, over and over again, to the wrong answers. Greed and perpetuated self-interest nurturing neglect that equals pain and suffering for more and more people, each day.
In 1980, America was the leading lender of money to other countries, with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 31 percent. Today, America borrows more money than any other country, and has a debt-to-GDP ratio of 127.5 percent. This is called, being upside down. It’s called, failure. And yet … but but—the Republicans. The Democrats.
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It’s true, republicans are fuel on the fire of this march with their supply-side economics. But so too are the democrats, with their 'third way'. Or, am I wrong? Did the democrats not hold a majority in both houses for Obama's first two years? And the best they could manage, with only having their own party in opposition to righting what needed to be righted, was—Obamacare? Universal healthcare, with a democratic majority, couldn’t even get a sniff of—maybe? Corporate reform? Such that we do not now have record levels of stock buybacks, unheard of CEO packages, when weighed against real wages that have remained stagnate since the late ‘70s. Record levels of income inequality, hand-in-hand with record levels of poverty (In May of 2016—note the date, the IMF issued the USA a warning regarding its high levels of poverty, especially among the young). Massive tax breaks for corporations. Nope, nope, and nope. But we did get corporate bailouts, because—too big to fail. And here I thought, in America, socialism was a bad idea?
Accountability. Where is it? Because it matters. But no, what we get is—team politics: Yo, young angry ‘Berniebro’ (someone please take the pen away from the person at the Atlantic that smeared these people) you had better vote for Hillary (if you love and care about America) or we’ll get Donald Trump, and then, how will you sleep at night? And just how well did that work out?
Well, I don’t know Boomer Person—when will you die? A little harsh? Perhaps, but also true. The divide is age. But when throughout this lovely experiment known as the human race has one generation not risen up, in ideals, against the older generation—their parents? And that’s what we have now. That’s the divide. One that’s also fueled by ... Yes, I know I was able to pick the low-hanging fruit of cheap tuition in terms of real dollars and a job market in an economy that wasn’t titled against me and although I know that’s not the case for you I’m really really good in life right now and I’d like to stay that way, please. How else can you explain the continued support of those that have been in power the last forty years that have brought us to where we are now? Accountability. Show it to me. Where is it, because I just don’t see it. Do you?
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Here’s the scorecard: Healthcare: 37th best in the world, while spending a higher portion of its GDP on this than any other nation. Children’s survival, health, education, and nutrition: 39th best in the world. Wealth inequality: 71st. Life expectancy: 46th. Poverty: 13.4 percent, with only 25 other countries having substantially higher and more extreme rates of poverty. Human Freedom Index: 17th. Freedom of the Press: 42nd. Accountability? Where? I’m waiting ...
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There are three pillars of any just society, and each one must be held up and protected by the will of the people—always. Education, healthcare, and welfare. Why? Because these are the things that help promote the greatest participation in a society by the most people, in the healthiest, most productive way. And that equals growth and opportunity for the most people, which then equals prosperity, for a nation. In other words, Main Street is the engine that drives an economy, not Wall Street.
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And so, yes, there’s only two parties, true—but not true. Democrats, listen to me carefully, republicans ARE NOT THE PROBLEM. And yes, we all know it is has become the party of the whacked-out write-offs. It is, however, you, that is the problem. And here, I do not mean the Boomers—the Establishment Democrat voter, for as we have seen, they have no apparent interest in looking at results—accountability, and are interested only in their own status quo. No, it is the progressives whose hands I hold to the fire. Bernie blinked, and here we are today. And by this I mean, it was his achilleas heal, the need to be accepted by the establishment. One that clearly wanted nothing to do with him—or you. Except, of course, to co-op your vote. To hold a gun to your head and say, vote for our candidate, or you will be responsible for electing that big bad man over there wearing a red tie. And again, how did that work out? And so, now it is time for you, youth of America, to wake up and demand accountability. You are the single largest cohort in American history—it is yours for the demanding. It’s yours for the taking. Get your candidate through the democrat primaries, or, if the DNC obstacles are too great to allow this to happen—leave the party. One, or the other, for a divided Democratic Party is no longer of use to anyone. In fact, it’s keeping America broken. You are the last ones standing, and it is your time now to make a difference. It is you, who can fix America, and stop this madness; this march toward fascism. And to you, my beautiful Boomer brothers and sisters, I leave you this: “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade, they know they shall never sit under.” – Greek proverb.