Pages
-
Recent Posts
Categories
Ian on Twitter
- Police and the Press: http://t.co/cxqrIeKi
- All recommended reading; this week's piece, too--McPhee's still got it: http://t.co/EREfdw6d via @NewYorker
- Nothing like an #Arsenal victory topped with a John Terry blunder _ http://t.co/UuzpNKIp
- American-Born Qaeda Leader Is Killed by U.S. Missile in Yemen: http://t.co/ri4jyEd9
- Possibly the stupidest excuse yet to call for stricter immigration controls: http://t.co/WCrfrbFB
Brian on Twitter
- GOP may change course on gay marriage: http://t.co/FiBGJDQs
- RT @zachdcarter: #NewGmail makes me want to smash my computer and buy a typewriter.
- I like press-savvy Brits: "In basic terms, how do we find the Usain Bolt among the millions of sperm in an ejaculate?" http://t.co/rM2ReFjZ
- @jaltucher is an excellent writer -- witty, touching, and insightful, with a unique voice: http://t.co/dnVDp8qj
- I would tend to agree with Beyer, though, that Bodemeister's run was one of the most impressive second-place finishes ever.
Blogroll
- Andrew P. Pratt
- Anna North
- Anne Flournoy
- Blue Virginia
- Daily Kos
- David Bordwell on cinema
- Deadline (aka Deadline Hollywood Daily
- Erin Barach
- Eve Fairbanks for Institute At Current World Affairs
- Firedoglake
- Gina Welch
- Greater NYC For Change
- How A Poem Happens
- Jim Emerson's Scanners
- Matt Yglesias
- Poetry Foundation
- Reading Between A & B (excellent archives)
- Signs Sans Signified
- Supermachine
- The Front Row (Richard Brody)
- The Paris Review Daily (on cinema)
- The Richmonder
- Tin House blog
- Whizbangwoman
- Zach Carter (HuffPo Finance)
experimenters in improving our communities
Lit Mag blogs
Movie blogs
Painters and sculptors
Poetry blogs
Political blogs
Working writers with active blogs
Archives
Tags
Alfred Hitchcock Anabasis Army of Shadows art history Avatar Ben Hecht Clark Gable Dashiell Hammett David O. Selznick fame George W. Bush Gone With the Wind Grand Illusion Helen Vendler Hollywood Italo Calvino James Joyce Janet Malcolm Jean-Luc Godard Jean-Pierre Melville Jean Cocteau Joan Didion Jonathan Franzen Jurassic Park Michael Haneke movies murder National Gallery of Art New Yorker writers New York Times poetry Raymond Chandler Rodin Seven Samurai Shakespeare T.S. Eliot The Leopard The Paris Review The Warriors Ulysses Victor Fleming Viggo Mortensen Vivien Leigh Wallace Stevens Xenophon
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Herzog!
On a recent Friday evening, I went down to the IFC to see Werner Herzog’s new film, Into the Abyss. It’s a genre film—the death penalty documentary—and its cloying subtitled, A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life, suggests it … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
“Because The Odyssey needs a German director. Everybody knows that a German, Schliemann, discovered Troy.”
Fritz Lang’s 1931 film M is the perfect narrative movie. It’s not worth trying to make that argument here, so I’ll limit myself to the obvious starting point, the beginning. In the opening scene, we’re introduced to Berlin rapt in terror, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Hollow Wastes
A review of the collected letters of TS Eliot in The Nation recently directed me back to two poems I last read, respectively, a few months ago and a few years ago, “The Waste Land” and “The Hollow Men.” I found … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Response: On Malcolm’s The Journalist and the Murderer
Whether or not Joe McGinniss, as Janet Malcolm presents him, is an archetypal bad journalist depends on him being a bad journalist to begin with. There’s an argument—consistent with Malcolm’s characterization of journalistic practice—that McGinniss is, in fact, a very … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
About Andre Agassi’s “Open”
This is one of the few sports books I’ve read that wasn’t a waste of time. Agassi is a fascinating guy for many reasons, and is almost infinitely more interesting than most other pro athletes. Almost all the reasons have … Continue reading
A shame that Ellroy won’t tip his hat to a good shamus
I was just looking again at Ian’s post of July 20 on this blog. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that James Ellroy’s criticism of Raymond Chandler is frivolous, and is based purely on Ellroy’s … Continue reading
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Uncategorized
Tagged Dashiell Hammett, James Ellroy, Raymond Chandler
1 Comment
A well-phrased dig
From Grant Gilmore’s 1974 Storrs lectures at Yale, in reference to a 19th-century dean of Harvard Law School: “Langdell seems to have been an essentially stupid man who, early in his life, hit on one great idea to which, thereafter, … Continue reading
Posted in Nonfiction, Uncategorized
Tagged Christopher Columbus Langdell, Grant Gilmore, insults, Ivy League rivalry
Leave a comment
Shamus, shammes, Seamus
By my silence lately, dear reader, if you exist, you might have concluded that I’d run afoul of some Providence mobster, that I’d been whacked, rubbed out, offed. And where would that have left us? I think it was Aristotle … Continue reading
Posted in Fiction, Movies, Uncategorized
Tagged Dashiell Hammett, detective novels, etymology, Raymond Chandler, shamus
Leave a comment
From Blackbeard to Jeffrey Dahmer
Recently, a relative gave me his copy of a large book called “The Encyclopedia of American Crime,” put together by the crime reporter Carl Sifakis and subtitled “From Blackbeard to Jeffrey Dahmer.” While Blackbeard gets a complete entry and a … Continue reading
Aragorn does Eliot
From a New York Times editorial on T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” as app: Another touch guides you to voices reading the whole poem aloud, including Eliot the poet and Viggo Mortensen, the “Lord of the Rings” star. There is … Continue reading