Posts by author
Michael Berger
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Cendrars, The Extraordinary Daydreamer
Long before David Shields excoriated the strict boundaries between journalism and fiction, espousing, in its place, a loose and open-ended hybrid that is more in keeping with “reality”, a Swiss-born Frenchman with one arm, a Gauloises cigarette forever dangling from…
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New Murakami
“The long-awaited English translation of 1Q84, the writer’s epic novel in three volumes that has proved a huge hit in his native Japan, will be published in English in October. All three sections are to appear together in a single…
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Being Sontag’s Assistant
“Then the book was finished, or at least a completed manuscript was turned in—as I was to learn, for Susan, the book is never finished. We spent a week holed up in her apartment combing through the galleys and then…
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Fetishizing Ruins
“So much ruin photography and ruin film aestheticizes poverty without inquiring of its origins, dramatizes spaces but never seeks out the people that inhabit and transform them, and romanticizes isolated acts of resistance without acknowledging the massive political and social…
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Long Live Hobos
In Santa Cruz, I had occasion to meet some hobos. Real or fake hobos: it was hard to make the distinction in a town so enshrined to the misfit ideal. There was a train bridge near the roller-coaster that you…
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Lovecraft Documentary
Lately I’ve been wanting to watch more documentaries about writers. Any suggestions? In the meantime, thanks to Galley Cat, I found this documentary about H.P. Lovecraft which is worth ninety minutes of your time.
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Novels Versus Stories
“I’m going to go way out on a limb here and say this: The short story is not experiencing a renaissance. Our current and much-discussed market glut of short fiction is not about any real dedication to the form. The…
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The Brewing Of Lot 49
How did Los Angeles, that haven of low-culture and strip mall malaise beat us (San Francisco) to the punch with high-brow coffee? (I jest. L.A. is great if you want to buy human bone jewelry, guzzle incredible garlic sauce, and…
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Books For The Politically Alienated
The founding editor of Bookslut offers an eclectic selection of books that might help us confront our own deeply American sense of political alienation. One of them I especially want to read: Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday…
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Gatsby in 3-D
“Blood will spew out and coat the screen in the spectacular drunk scene that ends with Myrtle getting punched in the nose. Vampire Weekend will score the film for full anachronistic effect. You’ll be able to count all 500 threads…
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Ishmael Reed On The “Jim Crow Media”
This last year Ishmael Reed published a book of satirical essays targeting the current American media: Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media: The Return of the Nigger Breakers. Despite being a MacArthur Fellow, a critically-acclaimed author of nine novels…
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The Best Single Issue Of Any Literary Magazine
Is? That’s what Luna Park asks. And comes up with Dirty Realism!