Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 30
August 21, 2022
Writer’s Desk: Deflect and Keep Moving
When interviewed by LitHub, novelist Hari Kunzru — who was one of many authors reading at the “Stand with Salman” event this past Friday on the steps of New York’s Public Library — was asked how he gets around writer’s block. His first response is what many writers say (in essence get over it): The …
August 15, 2022
Nota Bene: Freedom to Offend
What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist. Salman Rushdie
August 14, 2022
Writer’s Desk: Practice, Practice, Practice
Do you know Sam Lipsyte? If not, then now is the time to get acquainted. Start off with his novel, The Ask. It’s very … well, just read it. Funny, profane, true; all the best qualities. No One Left to Come Looking For You is coming out later this year and it’s a knockout. All …
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August 8, 2022
Screening Room: ‘Nightclubbing: The Birth of Punk Rock in NYC’
The monthly Sound Unseen film series is showing a cool new documentary this week at Trylon Cinema. Danny Garcia’s Nightclubbing: The Birth of Punk Rock in NYC throws down the gauntlet by arguing that punk really got its start at Max’s Kansas City and not CBGB. For a certain kind of fan, these are fighting …
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August 7, 2022
Writer’s Desk: Leave it Loose
Who doesn’t like a tidy conclusion? Life is random. Does our art have to be? Isn’t a great part of the joy of creating and consuming art based on the possibility of finding a closure that our daily lives never offer? Of course it is. If nobody liked neat finishes, then mystery novels would not …
July 31, 2022
Writer’s Desk: Rules? What Rules?
J. K. Rowling (born on this day in 1965) has sold a few books in her career. So it is somewhat refreshing to see her resisting the urge to lay down some must-follow rules for other writers to follow. In fact, in this piece from 2019, she points out that her breakthrough came largely from …
July 30, 2022
Nota Bene: Werner Herzog’s Novel of War and Nature
In Werner Herzog’s spectacular new novel, The Twilight World, he tells the story of Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who famously continued fighting World War II on a remote island in the Philippines until finally surrendering in 1974. Mixing the sublime, the strange, human obsession, and the implacability of nature in his usual deadpan style, …
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July 24, 2022
Writer’s Desk: Stick With It
Of late Robert Heinlein’s legacy as one of the great postwar science-fiction writers has been somewhat forgotten, or overshadowed by his status as libertarian icon. But he deserves recognition not just for his great novels (Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land) but for providing us with some of the most salient writing advice ever …
July 20, 2022
Screening Room: ‘Nope’
Jordan Peele’s Nope opens this week. It’s like Get Out and Us … only not. My review is at Slant: In writer-director Jordan Peele’s chilling Nope, a struggling, Black-operated ranch that supplies horses for Hollywood productions faces an additional threat in the form of an extraterrestrial being that likes to suck animals and people up into …
July 17, 2022
Writer’s Desk: Short is Okay
It is easy to confuse length with profundity, brevity with shallowness. The reverse can also be true, of course, but readers frequently believe that an epic-length novel must have some kind of importance, even if it does not always justify its length. Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 320 pages, give or take) noted …
