Category: the-art-of-narrative
- 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
- All Stories Are Made UpMoonglow by Michael Chabon. Harper. 430 pp. $28.00 Voss by Patrick White. Penguin. $18.00 The great Pittsburgh writer John Edgar Wideman—whom I wrote about in a recent post—once published a book entitled All Stories Are True. I thought it a brilliant and fascinating title, but it could just as easily have been All Stories Are False. Even ...Read more
- Uncle NutcaseManchester by the Sea. A film by Kenneth Longegan. With Casey Affleck, Kyle Chandler, Michelle Williams, Lucas Hedges. ***** Early in Manchester by the Sea, while the credits are rolling, there is a scene that continued to haunt me after the movie was over. Two brothers were out on a commercial fishing boat with the son ...Read more
- Black Boys Looking BlueSouth to a Very Old Place, Stomping the Blues, The Blue Devils of Nada, From the Briarpatch File from Collected Essays & Memoirs by Albert Murray. The Library of America. 1049 pp. $45.00. Moonlight, a film by Barry Jenkins, with Mahershala Ali, Duan Sanderson, Naomie Harris. ***** I haven’t finished the last few pieces from Collected Essays ...Read more
- My First Teacher Was a RabbiA Buddhist Reads the Bible: the Gospel of Mark from the New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press. Various things are conspiring to make me read the Bible, which I last read—a rather thorough reading—in 1966-7, when I was a freshman at Duke. At a recent sesshin, I did dokusan with Shohaku Okumura and he mentioned ...Read more
- Gusto and a Sense of EleganceThe Omni-Americans from Collected Essays & Memoirs by Albert Murray. The Library of America. 1048 pp. $45.00 The Omni -Americans was at least partly prompted by the Moynihan Report (The Negro Family: The Case For National Action) from 1965, and author Albert Murray states his central thesis in the introduction, “Someone must at least begin to try ...Read more
- Maggie’s FarmChronicles, Volume One by Bob Dylan. Simon & Schuster. 293 pp. $16.00 I’ve been fascinated by the reactions to Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize, which was announced as I was heading to Pittsburgh for my 50th high school reunion. A number of Baby Boomers seemed to regard it as a validation of their whole lives, as if ...Read more
- Not Little EnoughA Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. Anchor Books. 816 pp. $17.00. I began this book with great enthusiasm and sped through the first two hundred pages. Hanya Yanagihara is a wonderfully skilled novelist and pulled me right into the story. But by the last two hundred I was seriously tired of the book, almost dreaded reading. ...Read more
- Glug GlugSully, a film by Clint Eastwood. With Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney. I’ve always thought of Clint Eastwood as the King of the Grade B movie. One sure sign of Grade B is prolonged footage of a car driving somewhere, and there was ample such footage in Play Misty for Me, the first movie he ...Read more
- Who Are Your People?The Sympathizer a novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Grove Press. 385 pp. $16.00 This novel won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and is a remarkable work of art—I’m stunned at the way this younger novelist projects himself back into this tumultuous time—but I’m more interested in it as a human document than as a ...Read more
- Where the Boys AreWo Es War, Soll Ich Werden, the Restored Original Text by Guy Davenport. The Finial Press in Champaign, Illinois. $525.00 Once before on this website I reviewed a book that I was sure none of my readers would ever see, an obscure Buddhist text that had been out of print forever and that I was quite ...Read more
- Train to NowhereThe Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. Doubleday. 306 pp. $26.95 This is one of the most wrenching and difficult books I’ve ever read. It’s a work of art, and its sheer artistry gives pleasure. At the same time, I didn’t look forward to reading it every night. People will say the subject is slavery, or racism, but ...Read more
- Equal Rights to Live in HellEquity a film by Meena Menon and Amy Fox. With Anna Gunn, James Purefoy, Sarah Megan Thomas, Alysia Reiner.****1/2 This is the best movie about Wall Street I’ve ever seen. It’s probably the first one I ever understood. That doesn’t have to do with the fact that it’s about women. It has to do with expert ...Read more
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All Shook UpWhat's in a Song? IIWriting for his LifeWhat’s in a Song?Mixed Feelings
View Other Essays by Topic
aging (127)American literature (226)art (123)Buddhism (171)Christianity (132)creative process (262)death and dying (144)meditation (125)movies (167)music (42)race (110)religion (196)sex (187)spirituality (174)the art of narrative (266)Uncategorized (21)world literature (23)