This evening I saw The Shotgun Players (http://www.shotgunplayers.org/) perform “God’s Ear” at the Ashby Stage, and it was incredible. Set against an unchanging backdrop that calls to mind something like a large ice cave, the play tells a story we’ve experienced many times before, in drama, in literature, certainly in movies: A married couple struggles [...]
More ...Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
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 [...]
More ...“That’ll Be Two Dollars and Fifty Cents Please” by Myla Goldberg
Apr 07, 2010
10:31 pm
Filed under:"the world terrorist equation", accidental celebrities, america, celebrity, harpers, joyce carol oates, madness-of-crowds story, mass-media story, myla goldberg, the end of jay leno's career
Published in Harpers, March 2010. Story available here (registration required). Myla Goldberg’s “That’ll Be Two Dollars and Fifty Cents Please” is a story about lost youth and lost glamour, and while we’re at it, it’s a story about American free enterprise. Over the course of five pages we’re introduced to two residents of a small [...]
More ...Esquire Fiction
I read this during a layover in Phoenix. This story is terrible, beyond terrible, so bad as to inspire anger. Under most circumstances I would have stopped reading after encountering, as I did in the first few paragraphs, lines such as, “ . . . and the air plays on my forehead like a cold [...]
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