Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 22
August 6, 2023
Writer’s Desk: Prove Them All Wrong
Writers know that to get anywhere they generally require at least a few people to support what they are trying to do. Teachers, publishers, parents, spouses; everyone needs backup. Conversely, writers also know that to get anywhere, they also have to fight their way through the opposition. August Wilson, who was well into his thirties …
July 30, 2023
Writer’s Desk: You Are Talented
Onetime Greenwich Village bohemian and longtime Minnesotan Brenda Ueland published one of the great writing manuals in 1938. Unfortunately, very few people read If You Want to Write; after all, that was a time when the profession was seen as far harder to break into then it is today. The people of 1938 were missing …
July 23, 2023
Writer’s Desk: Do the Opposite
Director, playwright, and poet Jean Cocteau straddled worlds. His movies were like phantasmagorical dreams, his limpid writing flowed like filmstrips. For a few decades, his work defined much of what people meant when they talked about the avant-garde. In other words, Cocteau was not an artist like most others. Because of that, he had very …
July 20, 2023
Reader’s Corner: Of Anaïs Nin, He-Man, “The Talk,” and the Bomb
My latest graphic novel roundup was published in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune: If you think graphic novels tend to focus on people who get superpowers from spider bites or radioactive experiments gone wrong, think again. Four of this summer’s best graphic novels cover topics as wide-ranging as the sexual exploits of writer Anaïs Nin, “the talk” …
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July 17, 2023
Screening Room: ‘After Hours’
I reviewed the new Criterion Collection release of Martin Scorsese’s low-budget 1985 nightmare comedy After Hours for PopMatters: Now available in an extras-packed Criterion edition, Martin Scorsese’s somewhat forgotten entry in the One Crazy Night genre, After Hours (1985), has most of its hallmarks but gives the loopiness a spin that’s both eerie and carnivalesque… Here’s the …
July 16, 2023
Writer’s Desk: Challenge Yourself
The highly prolific R. F. Kuang has in just a few short years published multiple knockout successes. From her bestselling fantasies Babel and The Poppy War series to the publishing social media satire Yellowface, she has delivered one success after another. At the same time, she is still pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages …
July 13, 2023
Reader’s Corner: ‘Zippy the Pinhead’ to ‘Nancy’
I interviewed Zippy the Pinhead creator Bill Griffith about his new book on the mastermind behind the comic strip Nancy. Griffith is speaking about the book, Three Rocks, with Matt Groening at San Diego Comic Con. My interview ran in Publishers Weekly: How do you feel about going to Comic-Con? It’s not my turf—I don’t …
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July 9, 2023
Writer’s Desk: Take Some Time Off
Some writers live by the routine. Others abhor them. Both are correct. Charles Yu, the imaginative stylist of Interior Chinatown and the series Westworld, told PBS that he appreciates the importance of non-writing time: What I do is try to frame a question or idea in a useful or interesting way, set my subconscious to …
July 5, 2023
Screening Room: The Starring Chicago Film Festival
I wrote an article for Eyes Wide Open about a very specific film festival I worked on in Chicago in the summer of 2001: As movies editor for citysearch.com’s Chicago node, I should have been covering that thundering shift in the moviemaking landscape. But I did not truly see what was happening. I could tell …
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Screening Room: ‘The Lesson’
My review of the surprisingly good (for being in many ways so unsurprising in its twists and mysteries) The Lesson is at Slant: Every moment in The Lesson’s early going seemingly exists to illustrate pulp novelist Jim Thompson’s famous saying: “There is only one plot—things are not what they seem.” We see eminent novelist J.M. Sinclair …
