Selected Letters to the Editor

Other Voices, v.2, n.1 (February 2000)

To the Editors:

While I appreciate your existence on the web, and found it extremely useful to be able to read the review of Lacan's Biography by Jean-Michel Rabaté, I found it extremely distasteful that there is a link to Amazon.com ("click to order from Amazon.com") right on the page where the review is. I find it first of all extremely frustrating to find commercialism in nearly every corner of the internet, but beyond that, the tactics of huge businesses like Amazon and Barnes and Noble are making it extremely difficult for small presses that often publish controversial or unpopular material to be able to be distributed and supported. I hope you will consider this in the future.

Noam Scheindlin

Dear Noam Scheindlin,

I understand your concern regarding the Amazon.com links found on our issue 1.3 review pages. We instituted that system as an experiment to accertain whether such links would be useful to our readership. So far is has proven positive for some (and obviously distasteful to others).

Personally, I would never create such links to Barnes and Noble and have a very good idea of their tactics and role in the publishing world. Nevertheless, I do see Amazon in a different category that B & N. If you have further information on Amazon's negative relation or effect on small bookstores or presses, I would welcome that information.

If we were to review a book which is not widely available or was published by a small press, we would include happy include a direct link to the press itself and allow our readers to make use of that method to order the volume -- realizing, of course, that this not only lends exposure to the press, but is also more profitable for the press. For the most part however, the books we review are published by academic presses who often make use of external distributors.

I am sure you have noticed that our publication has no other form of advertizing on its pages. We do plan on making future use of reciprocal ad agreements with other academic publications. Would you see these in a similar negative light? I would appreciate your frank opinion.

Best Regards,

Vance Bell
Editor-in-Chief
Other Voices

There is some problem in the page : Georg Lukács: The Antinomies of Melancholy. I wasn't able to display pictures ... It's a big shame because the level of the biography is very high, and some pictures would just make it better!

Alessandro Urpi

Dear Alessandro Urpi,

Occasionally the eletronic nature of this medium gets the best of us. We have restored the images to which you refer and hope that other readers will comment when they find what appears to be a mistake or oversight on our part within these pages.

Sincerely,

Vance Bell

To whom it may concern:

I am interested in determining the pagination of the article by Bernd Herzogenrath in volume l, no. 3 on the film, LOST HIGHWAY. It would be good to secure this article by interlibrary loan, but I cannot find any libraries with this periodical aside from that of the University of Pennsylvania. Can the article be requested from the University of Pennsylvania? Please send me an E-Mail at [address withheld]@BUFFALOSTATE.EDU at your earliest convenience. I would be most grateful. Thank you.

  We thank you for your inquiry.

OTHER VOICES is an electronic journal published at the University of Pennsylvania. The article in question has not been published in print form as of this date. I would suggest citing the work as follows:

Herzogenrath, Bernd. "On the Lost Highway: Lynch and Lacan, Cinema and Cultural Pathology," Other Voices 1.2 (January 1999). http://dept.english.upenn.edu/~ov/1.3/bh/highway.html (12 February 1999)

This final date listed is the "last modified" date of the actual electronic file. This is a citation format suggested by the recent Columbia Guide to Online Style (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/cgos/index.html).

I would also be able to place you in email contact with the author at your request.

If you have any additional questions, please feel free to ask. I would also be curious for what purpose you are citing the above essay. It is always good to hear that people read and reference our publication.

All the Best,

Vance Bell