Category: the-art-of-narrative
- Taking in the PainWind River a film by Taylor Sheridan. With Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Kelsey Asbille, Gil Birmingham. ***** When Wind River ended I turned to my wife and said, “That’s the most violent movie I’ve ever seen,” a statement which I soon realized was ridiculous. What I meant was that the violence was the most wrenching I’d ...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
- 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
- Academic HackStraight Man by Richard Russo. Vintage Contemporaries. 391 pp. $14.00. **** I read this book because of Jennifer Senior’s review of Richard Russo’s latest book, in which she called Straight Man a better academic novel than David Lodge’s Campus Trilogy. I was so impressed by that remark, and the general tenor of Senior’s review, that I ...Read more
- Pip Pip Hooray!Purity by Jonathan Franzen. Picador. 598 pp. $17.00. ***** I had an odd and unique experience reading Purity. I got slightly bogged down in the book’s first section, which focuses on the title character; her name is Purity but she goes by Pip. She seemed clueless and helpless, living with a collection of strange roommates, burdened ...Read more
- Alcoholics PreposterousColossal a film by Nacho Vigalondo. With Anne Hathaway, Jason Sudeikis, Austin Stowell. *??? There’s a mind state called suspension of disbelief, where we overlook an unlikely aspect of a work of art because it is a premise of what we’re watching. The idea that James Bond would always do the right thing at the right ...Read more
- What’sYour Name, a film by Makato Shinkai, based on his novel. With Ryunosuke Kamiki, Mone Kamishiraishi, Ryo Narita. I’ve been reading Kobun Chino’s commentary on the Song of Awakening, and the day before I saw this film read the following passage: “When the body of all the buddhas penetrates my nature there is interpenetration and fusion. My nature ...Read more
- Doc, Ya Gotta Level Wit MeFull Frame Documentary Film Festival 2017 My Lineup: Whose Streets? / Still Tomorrow / The Good Postman / Abacus / Zaatari Djinn / Tribal Justice / Strong Island / Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities / Quest / The Force / May It Last: A Portrait of the Avett Brothers At ...Read more
- Old Corn-Drinking MellifluousAbsalom, Absalom! By William Faulkner. 315 pp. $15.95 I’m obsessed with the subject of telling stories. I’ve spoken before about how all stories are false, or all stories true; they are, in any case, human fabrications, which may have little to do with what actually happened. We love them nevertheless. Human beings tell each other stories, ...Read more
- Beckett in the BardoThe Unnamable from Three Novels by Samuel Beckett. Grove Press. 407 pp. $15.95. The mystery of Samuel Beckett continues, at least for me. Some months back, when I had finally tackled his Three Novels—which had been sitting on my shelves for years—I finished the first two, but admitted publicly, in this space, that I gave up ...Read more
- Stories Short and LongAutumn by Ali Smith. Pantheon. 264 pp. $24.95 Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned by Walter Mosley. Washington Square Press. 208 pp. $14.00 There are short stories that seem to have enough material for novels. Alice Munro’s late work was like that, any number of mid-length stories, forty or fifty pages, which encompassed an entire life. Frank O’Connor said ...Read more
- Distinctly Praise the YearsAtlantis: Three Tales by Samuel R. Delany. Wesleyan/New England. 212 pp. Every now and then I reread something by Samuel R. Delany because all of his work is intelligent, beautifully written, and unfailingly deep. The fact that I’ve read it before doesn’t in the least diminish it. I love spending time in the presence of such ...Read more
- You Gotta Start SomewhereBeginners a film by Mike Mills. With Ewen McGregor, Christopher Plummer, Melanie Laurent, Mary Page Keller, Cosmo. I have the perfect solution for those who loved 20th Century Women and don’t know what to watch next (after they’ve read the profile of director Mike Mills in the New Yorker): watch Mills’ previous film Beginners, which streams ...Read more
- Maybe Not This VillageTwentieth Century Women a film by Mike Mills. With Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, Lucas Jade Zumann. ****1/2 When I first heard the title of this movie, I thought, what the hell is a twentieth century woman? How is she different from a twenty-first century woman? But now that I’ve seen it, I think the ...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)