So, Anis Shivani convinced the Huffington Post (or maybe they convinced him, but I don’t think so) to publish his list of American writers he thinks are overrated, and now many people find it necessary to be all atwitter about it. I tried very hard to stay silent, and I’ll explain why in a bit, [...]
More ...Archive for the ‘Criticism’ Category
That Shivani Article
Aug 10, 2010
9:00 am
Filed under:anis shivani, bullshitting, creative writing industry, didacticism, huffington post, overrated writers, pedagogy
Counterpoint: Abramovic Redux (Part Deux) [AKA: "If You Love Your Fun, Die for It!"]
Jun 14, 2010
11:22 pm
Filed under:"cat" litter, "rugged individualism", america, celebrity, hollywood crap, marina abramovic, new age, the artist is present
I enjoyed the Flickr photostream accompanying Marina Abramovic’s retrospective at the New York Museum of Modern Art, though of course I didn’t look at all of it, maybe seven or eight or ten pages. Often enough, one of the interesting things about Abramovic’s work is the way it involves her audience. In the photographs, at least, looking [...]
More ...The Part About the Critics
May 29, 2010
9:14 am
Filed under:"rugged individualism", 2666, beatnik shit, celebrity, don delillo, j t leroy, masks, roberto bolano, sarah kerr, the savage detectives
To drag fiction toward the unknown he had to go there himself, and then invent a method with which to represent it. Since the unknown place was reality, the results of his work are multi-dimensional, in a way that runs ahead of a critic’s one-at-a-time powers of description. I know, I know: you should never [...]
More ...How to screw up a Hollywood adaptation of a Jim Thompson novel. Again.
May 07, 2010
1:32 am
Filed under:celebrity, hollywood crap, jessica alba's body double's bruised ass, jim thompson, the getaway, the grifters, the killer inside me
Two nights ago I finished Jim Thompson’s The Getaway. I’m a sold fan of Jim Thompson’s works — I cherish each page as I turn them, even his clunker novels. I went all the way to the near-end of The Getaway wondering why I was bothering. Doc McCoy is not nearly a colorful character as [...]
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