Blog about Denis Johnson’s story “The Starlight on Idaho”
“The Starlight on Idaho” is the second of five stories in Denis Johnson’s collection The Largesse of the Sea Maiden. Apart from the collection’s title story (which I wrote about here), “The Starlight...
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A review of Roberto Bolaño’s novella By Night in Chile
Toward the end of the 130 page monologue that is Roberto Bolaño’s novella By Night in Chile, narrator Father Sebastián Urrutia Lacroix claims that “An individual is no match for history.” His...
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Blog about Denis Johnson’s story “Strangler Bob”
Detail from Newgate Exercise Yard by Gustave Dore, 1872 Denis Johnson’s story “Strangler Bob” is the third selection in The Largesse of the Sea Maiden. At about 20 pages, it’s also the shortest piece...
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On Herman Melville’s novella Benito Cereno
Near the middle of Herman Melville’s 1855 novella Benito Cereno, our erstwhile protagonist Captain Amasa Delano encounters an old sailor tying a strange knot: For intricacy, such a knot he had never...
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Blog about not seeing Darren Aronofsky’s seventh film Mother! in the theater
I did not see Darren Aronofsky’s seventh feature film Mother! in the theater. *** I saw director Darren Aronofsky’s first feature film Pi at the Reitz Union theater at the University of Florida in the...
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Blog about Evan Dara’s two-act play Provisional Biography of Mose Eakins
Evan Dara’s latest work is a two-act play called Provisional Biography of Mose Eakins. Set “c. 2015” on a stage “As bare as you can stand it,” Dara’s play follows Mose Eakins, “35-ish and spry,” as he...
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Blog about the first 96 pages of William Gaddis’s novel Carpenter’s Gothic
I have blazed through the first three (unnumbered) chapters of William Gaddis’s third novel Carpenter’s Gothic (1985) this weekend, consuming the prose with an urgency I did not expect. After all,...
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Blog about about the Halloween chapter of William Gaddis’s novel Carpenter’s...
Mischief Night, Jamie Wyeth The fourth of seven unnumbered chapters in William Gaddis’s Carpenter’s Gothic is set over the course of Halloween, moving from morning, into afternoon, and then night....
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A riff on my favorite ghost story, Roberto Bolaño’s “The Return”
Detail from Spectrum Appearance of Banquo by Gustave Doré. Roberto Bolaño’s short story “The Return” is so good that it has two perfect opening paragraphs: I have good news and bad news. The good news...
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A patchwork of conceits, a hodgepodge of good intentions, another blog about...
In its sixth (and penultimate chapter), William Gaddis’s 1985 novel Carpenter’s Gothic includes a rare scene. Our heroine Elizabeth Booth exits the house she spends most of the book confined in and...
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Novel factory | A passage from (and a short riff on) William Gaddis’s The...
In Ch. VII of Part I of William Gaddis’s 1955 novel The Recognitions, the erstwhile hero of the novel, Wyatt Gwyon—who has by this point disappeared into an anonymous he—meets Basil Valentine, a...
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Seek it like a dream | Another blog about Gaddis’s The Recognitions
Earlier this week, continuing my audit of William Gaddis’s 1955 novel The Recogntions, I felt a tingling sense of recognition in the following lines from which Basil Valentine reads from “a copy of...
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She was the poem | Another riff on William Gaddis’s The Recognitions
An intriguing and confounding section of Chapter 1 of Part II of William Gaddis’s 1955 novel The Recognitions focuses heavily on Esme, the poet who models for Wyatt Gwyon as he paints his forgeries....
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J.G. Ballard’s “The Subliminal Man,” John Carpenter’s They Live, and Black...
Today is Black Friday in America. I don’t think it’s necessary to remark at length on the bizarre disjunction between this exercise in consumerism-as-culture and the intended spirit of the Thanksgiving...
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Gaddis Contra Carnegie | How to Win Friends and Influence People in The...
The second episode of Part II, Ch. 5 of William Gaddis’s 1955 novel The Recognitions returns to the consciousness of sadsack everyman Mr. Pivner. Through milquetoast Mr. Pivner (the long-lost father...
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A review of Hayao Miyazaki’s film Porco Rosso
Hayao Miyazaki’s Porco Rosso (1992) is one of my favorite films, and I was able to see it this summer for the first time on the big screen thanks to Studio Ghibli Fest 2018. Although I’ve seen Porco...
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Blog about a metatextual moment at the end of William Gaddis’s novel The...
In the epilogue of his 1955 novel The Recognitions, William Gaddis checks in on the book’s enormous background cast, tying up loose ends, but also leaving many of the characters frayed, burned out, or...
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A review of Paul Kirchner’s Hieronymus & Bosch, a slapstick comedy set in Hell
My review of Paul Kirchner’s latest collection Hieronymus & Bosch is up at The Comics Journal. Here is the first paragraph of the review: Paul Kirchner’s Hieronymus & Bosch collects over...
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A review of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s prescient dystopian novel We
Set millennia in the future, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s 1921 dystopian novel We tells the story of a man whose sense of self shatters when he realizes he can no longer conform to the ideology of his...
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A review of Lucia Berlin’s short story collection Evening in Paradise
Evening in Paradise is the second posthumously-published collection of short stories by the American writer Lucia Berlin. The book collects twenty-two stories originally published between 1981 and...
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