Features & Reviews
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L.A. on Fire
Nathanael West‘s The Day of the Locust tells the story of Tod Hackett, a painter trying to survive in Hollywood while planning his masterpiece, “The Burning of Los Angeles.” Hackett is surrounded by dubious characters: an actress as beautiful as…
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Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys
“There’s something unique about being a member of the sex worker club, an instant camaraderie that bonds one to people who would otherwise be strangers, and this chemistry is something of which Sterry can’t get enough.”
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The Write Links
“Unsettled: The PW Survey on the Google Book Settlement” A Q&A with (rockstar) literary agent Georges Borchardt. Underground Library is hoping to do for the literary underground what MySpace has done for independent music. More on the Google settlement: “Libraries…
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The Importance of Being Still: The Rumpus Interview With Charles Baxter
In his essay, Baxter discusses the degree to which Americans “have distrusted silence and its parent condition, stillness.”
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Kubrick’s 1961 Lolita is the First 70s Movie
The other day I read a rambling but entertaining essay over on Bright Lights Film Journal, called All Tomorrow’s Playground Narratives, which analyzed Kubrick’s Lolita in terms of — well, approximately anything that occurred to the guy, it would seem.…
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How to Leave Hialeah
“Crucet is endowed with the double vision that helped Richard Wright and Salman Rushdie describe the lives of marginalized people with poignancy, humor, and rich music.”
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Playing With Words
One thing that fascinates me about writing is how people play with the medium: making up games and assignments to bring us together. For example the Napkin Project at Esquire, where cocktail napkins are mailed to writers and then returned,…
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Jami Attenberg: The Last Book I Loved, Everything Matters!
I was going to write this piece about A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh, which is also a very good book, one that I loved, and one I recommend you read. I recently Netflixed “Apocalypse Now,” which for some…
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Poetics and Slaughter
2005 saw the seventieth anniversary of the birth of Danilo Kiš. He died of lung cancer in 1989.
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Stand Proud
“There’s a blurb on the front of the 2008 paperback edition of Elmer Kelton’s novel Stand Proud. It’s from True West magazine, and it reads, ‘One thing is certain: as long as there are writers as skillful as Elmer Kelton,…
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No Jackets
“What makes these books so unusual-looking is that, even though they’re hardcovers, their cover art is not printed on dust jackets but instead stamped directly onto the boards that hug their pages. The result is a handsome, eye-catching look that…