Chris Barsanti's Blog

Writer’s Desk: Let Yourself Go

Even though the late, great playwright and script doctor Tom Stoppard was known for dense, gorgeously ornate works that tangled with politics, philosophy, physics, and eternity, he did not go in for self-examination or navel-gazing. Instead, he once told The Guardian, he preferred just letting himself rip on the page: A writer ought to be …

Continue reading Writer’s Desk: Let Yourself Go

Writer’s Desk: Get a Cat

Per one of the characters in Muriel Spark’s A Far Cry from Kensington, concentration correlates to having a cat around: Alone with the cat in the room where you work, I explained, the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk-lamp.  The light from a lamp, I explained, gives …

Continue reading Writer’s Desk: Get a Cat

Reader’s Corner: Fall Graphic Novels

I reviewed four fall comics collections and graphic novels for The Minnesota Star Tribune:

Writer’s Desk: Write People, Not Ideas

Many writers get to work once they have a concept. Have idea, everything else follows. Edward Albee disagrees: I don’t have ideas. I have people. They meet. Things happen. They are changed. Find out why these people are in your head. Eventually they’ll say: ‘Write me’

Reader’s Corner: ‘Blank Space: A Cultural History of the 21st Century’

Pop culture is eating itself, according to the next book from W. David Marx.

Writer’s Desk: Building Your Book

The books of Mark Z. Danielewski (House of Leaves, especially) are complex, dense, and thrillingly visual. He tells BOMB that his process is a lot like construction: Writing is so much about laying down brick after brick, and yet you can’t just stack bricks, because then you’re making a tomb. There has to be this …

Continue reading Writer’s Desk: Building Your Book

Writer’s Desk: Coffee, Roaming, and TV

Patti Smith on her morning writing routine: I get up and if I feel out of sorts I’ll do some exercises. I’ll feed my cat, then I go get my coffee, take a notebook, and write for a couple of hours. Then I just roam around. I try to take long walks and things like …

Continue reading Writer’s Desk: Coffee, Roaming, and TV

Screening Room: ‘Ballad of a Small Player’

My review of the latest confection from Edward Berger (Conclave) is at Slant Magazine: Ballad of a Small Player is a fevered, neon-drenched film about a man on the run from his crimes and himself, and it wants to simultaneously revel in the glamor of high-end gambling and critique the unending gluttony that fuels it. This …

Continue reading Screening Room: ‘Ballad of a Small Player’

Writer’s Desk: Get Yourself an Office

Alain de Botton (The Consolations of Philosophy) had a problem, as many do, with insomnia and focus. So he decided to go to work at an office. It allowed him to escape:  One of the most welcome aspects of office work is that you do not need to be fully yourself. It demands that those …

Continue reading Writer’s Desk: Get Yourself an Office

Screening Room: ‘The Fence’

In Claire Denis’ arch and darkly funny film, The Fence, colonialism isn’t history, it’s not even past.