Category: creative-process
- She Got Her ManPhantom Thread a film by Paul Thomas Anderson. With Vicky Krieps, Daniel Day-Lewis, Lesley Manville ***** It’s tough to like a movie when you can’t stand the protagonist. But I absolutely loved Phantom Thread. It’s a candidate for my favorite movie of the year. Reynolds Woodcock—who has a hard name to live up to—is a neurotic, arrogant, ...Read more
- To NowhereOn the Road from Road Novels 1957-1960 by Jack Kerouac. Edited by Douglas Brinkley. Library of America. 864 pp. It’s an odd feeling to reread On the Road after just reading The Dharma Bums for the first time. In a way it’s the same book all over again, Jack Kerouac on a mad dash around the ...Read more
- Woman in a Room Full of MenThe Post a film by Steven Spielberg. With Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts. **** There’s something irresistible about newspaper movies, the essentially blue collar guys who work there (they’re writers, but live more like private detectives) with their sleeves rolled up and their ties loosened, the looming deadlines, the whole oldstyle ...Read more
- Drunken SaintThe Dharma Bums from Road Novels 1957-1960 by Jack Kerouac. Edited by Douglas Brinkley. Library of America. 864 pp. ***1/2 Jack Kerouac is the spiritual father of every whacked-out hippie who ever stumbled his way through the Sixties, head bobbing in mild agreement, mouth perpetually grinning, a beard flowing around his collar. Kerouac himself was a ...Read more
- Choosing LifeThe Light That Shines Through Infinity: Zen and the Energy of Life by Dainin Katagiri. Shambhala. 229 pp. $16.95. Jesus’ Son Stories by Denis Johnson. Picador. 133 pp. $15.00 It was unnerving for me to read Denis Johnson’s excellent but disturbing book of stories at the same time I was reading the new book of lectures by ...Read more
- Problem SolvedTishomingo Blues from Four Later Novels by Elmore Leonard. Library of America. 961 pp. $40.00. No sooner do I complain about a problem in Elmore Leonard’s work—the fact that every novel seemed to feature a monstrous guy who killed people casually and unnecessarily, as if such people don’t need explaining—than it disappeared. Tishomingo Blues includes plenty ...Read more
- My Elmore Leonard ProblemOut of Sight from Four Later Novels by Elmore Leonard. Library of America. 961 pp. $40.00. I’m coming to the end of my Elmore Leonard period. I never thought, when I decided to look into his Detroit novels because my son now lives in Detroit and I’ve gotten to know the place a little, that I ...Read more
- Time is a What?A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. Anchor Books. 340 pp. $16.00. ***** I’m aware as a writer that many people I read are more talented than I, but now and then I’m pulled up short by a writer who does something I couldn’t even aspire to. I felt that way about War and ...Read more
- Grad Student from HellThe Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy. Grove Press. 338 pp. $16.00. The Ginger Man was one of the famous dirty books from my youth, published by Olympia Press and occupying the shelves alongside Tropic of Cancer, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and My Life and Loves. My freshman college roommate in 1966 showed up with everything trendy in ...Read more
- Master Craftsman Having FunFour Novels of the 1980’s: City Primeval, LaBrava, Glitz, Freaky Deaky by Elmore Leonard. Library of America. 1010 pp. $37.50. Elmore Leonard began to relax into his craft when he entered the decade of the eighties, when he would turn 60. He had stopped drinking, for one thing, spoke openly about how that affected him. He ...Read more
- Bake a Motherfucking Cake as Fast as You CanPatti Cake$ a film by Geremy Jasper. With Danielle Macdonald, Bridgette Everett, Cathy Moriarity, Siddharth Dhanajay, Mamoudou Athie. **** I should admit up front that I’m not a rap fan. I’ve tried—my nephew once made me a tape of rap’s greatest hits—but I couldn’t get into it. I like the rhythm at first, and the whole ...Read more
- Servants of LifeIn the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman. Picador. 497 pp. $17.00 ****1/2 This is the last book—the last of many—that my friend Levi recommended to me. He always recommended books as if to say: Go buy this and start reading it tonight (though I never did that). He went on and on ...Read more
- Living DeliberatelyHenry David Thoreau: A Life by Laura Dassow Walls. University of Chicago Press. 615 pp. $35.00. This is one of the best biographies I’ve ever read. Right at the moment I can’t think of a better one. And it comes at an ideal moment for me. The official occasion is the bicentennial of Thoreau’s birth, in 1817. ...Read more
- Notes on a Remark by Elmore LeonardHow He Gave Up Booze and Learned to Relax “By then I was in AA and perhaps not taking myself so seriously. I do think my writing began to improve at this time, mainly because I wasn’t taking the writing so seriously, either. I learned to relax and not think of it as writing.” One of the ...Read more
- Lives of CrimeElmore Leonard: Four Novels of the 1970’s. Unknown Man No. 89, The Switch. Library of America. 809 pp. $37.50. I’ve begun to decide—as I read one Elmore Leonard novel after another (that’s one of the advantages of the Library of America; you get to soak yourself in a single writer) that he wasn’t a crime novelist ...Read more
- The Coma Was a Come-onThe Big Sick a film by Michael Showalter. With Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Holly Hunter, Ray Romano. ***** The Big Sick is so much the best movie I’ve seen this summer (I was happy just to find a movie I wanted to see), so unique as a romantic comedy, so perfect in the way it’s put ...Read more
- Going DutchFifty-Two Pickup, Swag from Four Novels of the 1970’s by Elmore Leonard. Library of America. 808 pp. $37.50 Elmore Leonard wrote great—I would almost say groundbreaking—dialogue, but the rest of his writing was ordinary, even pedestrian. Let’s the opening of Fifty-Two Pickup. “He could not get used to going to the girl’s apartment. He would be tense, ...Read more
- And Gets Back Up AgainEmpire Falls by Richard Russo. Vintage. 483 pp. $16.95. **** Richard Russo has done it again, written a book where I was full of a kind of mild admiration through the first half, seeing how he had set up an interesting situation, sketched in some sympathetic characters, done some writing that was mildly humorous, then somehow, ...Read more
- He Cared Too MuchStories by John O’Hara. The Library of America. 860 pp. $40.00 John O’Hara was an Irish Catholic and doctor’s son from Eastern Pennsylvania who believed—apparently for much of his life—that he would have been a happy man if he had just gone to Yale. That didn’t keep him from getting booted from three prep schools, one ...Read more
- The Wonder of WomenWonder Woman a film by Patty Jenkins. With Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Robin Wright ***1/2 Arrival a film by Denis Villeneuve. With Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker ***** A Quiet Passion a film by Terence Davies. With Cynthia Nixon, Jennifer Ehle, Duncan Duff *** I’m as happy as everyone else that we finally have a movie about ...Read more
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Yes You Can Go Home AgainHow to Live Your LifeYou Need to be WritingThe Other SideThe River is Freedom, the Raft Paradise
View Other Essays by Topic
aging (114)American literature (198)art (110)Buddhism (163)Christianity (120)creative process (232)death and dying (128)meditation (118)movies (153)music (36)race (95)religion (181)sex (158)spirituality (168)the art of narrative (238)Uncategorized (19)world literature (23)