Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 29
November 27, 2022
Writer’s Desk: Dylan Says Study
Learning anything means practice. It means trying and trying and messing up and circling back and trying again and again. It generally also requires studying those who came before you. Some would criticize this as imitation. Bob Dylan disagrees. In a 2004 interview, he said: It is only natural to pattern yourself after someone. If …
November 21, 2022
Screening Room: ‘Love in the Time of Fentanyl’
I reviewed the documentary Love in the Time of Fentanyl from DOC NYC for The Playlist: Almost everything viewers need to know about the mortal consequences of the fentanyl epidemic portrayed in Colin Askey’s new Vancouver-set documentary “Love in the Time of Fentanyl” is contained in one exchange between two users. One man talks about how coming …
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November 20, 2022
Writer’s Desk: Gather Life
In The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, the only novel that poet Rainer Maria Rilke ever wrote, the author’s stand-in is a wandering nobleman and poet who walks the streets of Paris and tries to avoid going mad. In between those struggles, he worries that at the ripe old age of twenty eight, he has …
November 14, 2022
Screening Room: ‘There There’
There There, the latest comedy from Andrew Bujalski (Computer Chess) opens later this week. I reviewed for Slant: Writer-director Andrew Bujalski’s There There, a funny and cleverly linked series of dramedic vignettes, doesn’t try to hide the stitchwork imposed by pandemic-period production restrictions. Instead, the film leans into them, creating a schizoid atmosphere that underlies and …
November 13, 2022
Writer’s Desk: Keep Going
Jesmyn Ward, author of the terrific novels Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing, did not have an easy time of getting published. But she stuck with it. She also had a clutch of fellow writers in her corner who told her the right things: Persist. Read, write, and improve: tell your stories. Accept rejection …
November 6, 2022
Writer’s Desk: Don’t Write Until You Are 25
A lot of writers think they have something to say. It’s part of the reason they wanted to become writers. Some of them are correct. But not all. Unfortunately, the ones who do not have something to say tend not to find out until it is too late. However, there is a simple rubric for …
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November 3, 2022
Screening Room: ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’
The new movie from Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin, reunites Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson from his first feature, In Bruges. Banshees opens this week. I reviewed for Eyes Wide Open: Given what Martin McDonagh puts his characters through in his latest bloody confabulation, The Banshees of Inisherin, and how poorly they explain and understand …
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October 30, 2022
Writer’s Desk: Story Before Facts
Michael Crichton mastered the art of writing thrilling novels that both seemed like they could happen while stretching reality in ways that gave scientists headaches. The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Congo, these all existed in worlds that were adjacent to science in ways that pushed the thriller plots along but never let the real scientific …
October 23, 2022
Writer’s Desk: Create What You Cannot See
Novelist and new Nobel Prize winner for literature Annie Ernaux wrote a few years back about the influence of surrealists (Andre Breton, George Perec) on her work in her “formative years.” Part of her fascination seemed to be due to their power to make the ineffable real and graspable. In her piece, “The Art of …
October 19, 2022
Reader’s Corner: ‘What We Owe the Future’
Philosopher William MacAskill’s new book, What We Owe the Future, tries to do what few books do well: Take a big, hairy subject and make it understandable for a broad audience. He succeeds somewhat, but the issue is ultimately with the subject itself. My review is at PopMatters: Many ideas with great potential to cause …
