Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 19
December 11, 2023
Reader’s Corner: Great New Graphic Novels
I covered a quartet of great new graphic novels out this winter for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Four graphic novels, among the many fascinating titles hitting stores this winter, delve into a range of subjects: the stark politics and emotional legacy of the Mariel boatlift, a family’s fraught experiences with digital reincarnation, thrilling exploits of hip-hop’s …
December 10, 2023
Writer’s Desk: Just Keep Going
According to Rachel Aviv’s recent portrait of Writer’s Desk favorite Joyce Carol Oates, there really isn’t that much to the author’s fantastic output: …she has not really written that much, when you think about the fact that all it takes to write a hundred books is about two pages a day over the course of …
December 5, 2023
TV Room: Best Shows of 2023
Slant Magazine just published their big year-end TV roundup for 2023. I contributed the intro and wrote about one of my favorite shows from the past year, Fleishman Is in Trouble. Read it here: We’re well into the so-called post-Peak TV era. Tightening budgets and consolidating streaming platforms suggest an uncertain future for the medium. …
December 3, 2023
Writer’s Desk: Get Some Animals
Rita Mae Brown’s career has covered quite the gamut. She has written everything from gay coming-of-age novels (Rubyfruit Jungle) to slasher flick screenplays (Slumber Party Massacre!) and many lucrative mystery novels (the ones that the ingenious cat Sneaky Pie Brown has co-authored). How, NPR once asked the prolific Brown, did she get past writer’s block? …
November 29, 2023
Screening Room: ‘The Taste of Things’
Delectable, delicious, all the adjectives that spring to mind with the great food films, The Taste of Things opens later this year in limited release. My review is at Slant Magazine: Tran Anh Hung’s The Taste of Things is almost halfway done before it even hints that there’s something going on within its fin-de-siècle setting besides the …
November 26, 2023
Writer’s Desk: Hunt for Books Which Excite You
You would think that all writers read as much as they can. Not true. Some claim not to have the time. Others don’t want to be unduly influenced by somebody else’s work. Nonsense, says Ed Park, whose raucous new novel Same Bed Different Dreams is just all kinds of amazing. According to Park: I’ll still …
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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.
