Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 10
September 22, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Epiphanies are Cheating
Novelist and writing professor Charles Baxter was reading a Best American Short Stories volume when he realized something: Every story seemed to end the same way: I kept coming upon final pages in which there was a moment when a character stopped and looked off into the distance, and then a sentence the equivalent of …
September 15, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Look Outside
Anne McCaffrey (Dragonriders of Pern series) moved from America to Ireland, where she enjoyed, among other things, the “lovely vistas.” It’s not something that most writers can manage, of course. But she made a good point about the importance of having something to look at: I think writers need windows on a view to remind …
September 8, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Design It Yourself
When J.D. Salinger saw the Signet paperback cover for his novel The Catcher in the Rye, with a very literal painting of Holden Caulfield wandering the sordid streets of New York, like many authors, he was displeased. Unlike many authors, he took matters in his own hand. One of the more famous of the book’s …
September 6, 2024
Screening Room: ‘Elton John: Never Too Late’
The new documentary Elton John: Never Too Late just premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. It should be coming relatively soon to Disney+. My review ran at The Playlist: The makers of “Elton John: Never Too Late” wisely didn’t try to be completists. After a half-century-plus of touring as well as recording approximately eleventy thousand albums …
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September 1, 2024
Screening Room: ‘Punishment Park’
I took a look back at the little-seen 1971 documentary Punishment Park in Eyes Wide Open: In this faux documentary — imagined as the footage of a British news crew — the U.S. has created a network of internment centers called Punishment Parks to deal with prison overcrowding and help train law enforcement… Here’s the …
Writer’s Desk: Work to Create
In the 1970s, Philip Glass had become an American composer to watch. Celebrated and also vilified, his minimalist work got attention. But it didn’t pay the bills. In fact, Glass lost money pretty much every time he took his ensemble on tour. So how did he get by? The son of Baltimore immigrants, Glass did …
August 31, 2024
Screening Room: ‘Apocalypse in the Tropics’
My review of the new documentary Apocalypse in the Tropics (which just screened at both Venice and Telluride film festivals), was published in The Playlist: It might be challenging for some viewers to take activists seriously when they are speaking in tongues. But that is exactly what Petra Costa does in her edgy yet empathetic documentary ‘Apocalypse in …
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August 24, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Writing Solves Problems
When she was a teenager, Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) started journaling, as many of us do. After penning the usual things (what was happening in her life, thoughts about books she was reading), she realized there was a purpose for the journal. It was a tool. As she wrote in Granta: I had discovered …
August 19, 2024
Screening Room: ‘Between the Temples’
The new comedy Between the Temples opens later this week in limited release. Find it if you can. My review is at PopMatters: There is an honesty to Nathan Silver’s Between the Temples which belies the stylistic flourishes and alt-comedy sensibility. Moment after moment provides grist for some great epiphany or cute punchline that never quite comes. …
August 18, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Keep Things Vague
In 1972, Jorge Luis Borges was a sage of literature. Seventy years old, blind, and feted around the world for his delicately phantasmagoric fiction, he was visited by Fernando Sorrentino, a dedicated fan. They talked for a week. Here’s a piece of advice Borges gave Sorrentino, noted by Faena Aleph: I believe that a writer …
