Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 18
November 19, 2023
Writer’s Desk: Keep Challenging Yourself
Before becoming the kind of writer who can get published anywhere from Tin House and Granta to the Wall Street Journal, Phil Klay spent several years in the Marine Corps and was deployed to Iraq. He drew on that experience to create his National Book Award-winning classic, Redeployment. A hell of a writer who can …
November 12, 2023
Writer’s Desk: Bad Writing Can Make Great Stories
Writers are told to focus on a lot of things: Plot, character, structure, style. But primarily they are taught as craftspeople to perfect their writing on a small scale. Word by word. Sentence by sentence. Enough good sentences and you have a great story. Right? Jeanette Winterson disagrees: When I do my courses with my …
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November 5, 2023
Writer’s Desk: Keep Dialogue Short, Meaningful, and Useful
The great Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen wrote one of the great writing essays, “Notes on Writing a Novel.” It’s particularly useful in terms of how to craft dialogue. A few snippets:
October 30, 2023
Screening Room: ‘American Fiction’
Cord Jefferson’s provocative satire on race and literature, American Fiction, skewers modern-day minstrelsy and performative allyship.
October 29, 2023
Writer’s Desk: You Don’t Have to Choose Between Serious and Silly
Besides being among the more common decorations of dorm rooms for a certain brand of college student, the novels of Tom Robbins occupy an odd space in the American fiction landscape. They are big and broad comedic canvases, sweeping up oddball characters in goofball plots stippled with sharp bursts of screwball dialogue. Think of him …
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October 27, 2023
Screening Room: ‘Pain Hustlers’
My review of the new movie Pain Hustlers is at Slant: David Yates’s Pain Hustlers puffs itself up as a dynamic epic about the American dream but ends up glorifying some truly grotesque characters. Wells Tower’s script pulls loosely from Evan Hughes’s book about how executives at pharmaceutical company Insys Therapeutics were convicted in 2019 of conspiring …
October 22, 2023
Writer’s Desk: Leave Something Worthwhile Behind
The late Clive James was a cultural student of multivarious appetites and great enthusiasms. All the great critics are (avoid the ones with too narrow an idea of what is good or worthwhile; they don’t enjoy what they do). He could also turn a mean phrase. For instance: My idea of a fine wine was …
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October 18, 2023
Screening Room: ‘The Pigeon Tunnel’
My review of Errol Morris’ new documentary about master spy novelist and professional faker John le Carré, The Pigeon Tunnel, which premieres on Apple TV this Friday, is at PopMatters: A run-of-the-mill con artist steals from you with a clever ruse or when you look the other way. The top-notch con artist can look you …
October 15, 2023
Writer’s Desk: Get to the Next Page
Alan Dean Foster, one of the most prolific wordsmiths of all time, does not waste a lot of time. He cannot, having written dozens of books, including many novelizations (Star Wars, Star Trek, etc.). That is why Foster’s advice for new writers is eminently functional: Read everything you can in your favored genre, including older …
October 8, 2023
Writer’s Desk: Follow Your Inspiration
According to Illumination and Night Glare: the Unfinished Autobiography of Carson McCullers, the author frequently faced bouts of terror that she would never write again. These were the “night glares.” McCullers relied on small bits of inspiration to juice her writing. As writers know, these usually come out of nowhere and can seem like nothing. …
