Garrett Zecker's Blog, page 2

To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

A beautiful, broadly modernist tale that explores the long-term relationships within families, the differences and drives of men and women, and the way art (and education) can influence a lifetime of work and what we ultimately place value on. I found myself attaching to the mother most of the story. Still, there is no doubt that the core family dynamics that permeate the central narrative are at the core of every family in some way or another – and in modern times, with modern incomes and expec...

Coldiron’s Junk Film

Katharine Coldiron’s JUNK FILM is a book that was recommended to me for my voracious taste in tacky, unreliable, exploitative, and crap cinema. A collection of essays that cover perennial favorites such as Plan 9, Showgirls, Switchblade Sisters, and The Room, Coldiron also explores some lesser-known (to me) classics that I immediately went out and bought remastered physical media copies of films/shows like Cop Rock and Death Bed. Each of these essays are introspective love letters to the craft, ...

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

I have read a lot of Ray Bradbury but had never picked up this gorgeous reflection on growing up in America in the early 20th Century that ended up on my desk one spring day in 2023. This is a book that seems to do what Bradbury does best, but perhaps not in the way that one might consider it to be based on the rest of his work. This is truly magical realism, where Bradbury uncovers and simmers the magic of the perfect summer in the ‘good old days’ of his childhood. Frankly, the anecdotes, the f...

#763 The Color Purple (1985) and The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982)

Somehow it took me three English degrees, writing and teaching for over twenty years, and a hazy summer in 2023 to finally pick up Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. Sometimes with modern classics such as these, it is easy to put too much weight and expectations on the many opinions, interpretations, and adaptations that have come about over the years. Thankfully, it is one of those books that deserves all of the praise and attention it has ever received. It is truly a masterpiece. 

The Color P...

Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd

I picked up Peter Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor as an entry on David Bowie’s essential top 100 books – and I am so glad I did. I have heard nothing about this author, and what a treat it was to read this obsessive mystery novel about poverty, history, murder, architecture, and how coded occultism and superstition, as well as the echoing curse of death, can inject itself so deeply and linger for centuries in the history of a city. 

Ackroyd seems like one of those authors with a local flavour – particula...

Repo Man (1984)

This is one of those films that just happens to be on the Criterion Collection’s list, but not on the 1001. That comes as somewhat of a surprise as the film is a remarkable low-budget achievement but was also a contender among a year of incredible films that are all on the list that I am constantly revisiting. Ghostbusters, The Terminator, Amadeus, Beverly Hills Cop, Paris Texas, I mean, the competition was over before it began. But Alex Cox’s introduction to the world, presenting Emilio Estevez...

#549 Walkabout (1971)

What an incredible film. I picked up Nicholas Roeg’s Walkabout (1971, Criterion Spine #10) after doing a recent binge on David Bowie media that brought me to The Man Who Fell To Earth – another of Roeg’s films. I decided to watch some of the other pieces he directed that I hadn’t seen. Walkabout was one of the most notable appearing as a Criterion, the 1001 list, the BFI’s top films to see before fourteen, and a variety of others. I watched Walkabout with my two oldest sons; if there is one reco...

Florida Man Fun with Dave Barry’s Swamp Story

Dave Barry has always been an absolute powerhouse in my life as a reader and writer. By the time I turned nineteen or twenty, I had read all of his books, owned most of them, met Barry several times, and was grateful for the handful of times I could share personal correspondence with him. As I gained more and more of a postsecondary education in literature and as a writer, it became apparent how he could straddle the thin black line of humor, style, populism, and his audience’s expectations to c...

Bowie in 2023: #629 THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (1976), THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH by Walter Tevis, THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH by Dan Watters, LAZARUS by David Bowie and Edna Walsh, ALWAYS CRASHING IN THE SAME CAR by Lance Olsen, BOWIE’S BOOKSHELF by John O’Co

Over the past few months, after being given a new novel about Bowie’s life to review for The Collidescope (at which a portion of this post was published a few weeks ago, “Freedom in the Realms of Eccentricity“), I dove headfirst back into the world of one of my favorite artists of all time. David Bowie left us seven years ago, leaving us with Blackstar and Lazarus – two works of art that were clearly meant to be his swan song. His memory is as fresh as it’s always been, however. In the few thous...

Now Is Not The Time To Panic by Kevin Wilson

Kevin Wilson’s Now is Not the Time To Panic is a beautifully nostalgic trip back to when I was a teen and tried to do the same things our protagonists succeeded in, yet decidedly didn’t want to. The story is about two kids in a will they/won’t they relationship and a small town tormented by confusing folk-art grunge garage-made photocopied posters that could mean anything from the community being infiltrated by a satanic cult right under the noses of the guardians of decency, to perhaps buzz mar...