Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 37
December 25, 2021
Holiday Break: ‘Snow Days’
Take a snow day. Maybe a snow week. You deserve it for getting (almost!) through 2021 in one piece.
December 24, 2021
Screening Room: Guilty Pleasures
There were a lot of great movies in 2021. Also some not-so-great ones. That does not mean, though, that these less-greats did not deserve a mention. The Playlist put together a list of the guilty pleasure movies its critics admitted to enjoying this year. I was happy to make my contribution, specifically about the movie …
December 19, 2021
Writer’s Desk: Emerson Said Get Some Sleep
The Transcendentalist thinker and author Ralph Waldo Emerson (that’s his study above) nurtured the careers of many writers, most famously Henry David Thoreau. As a result, he had some advice for how writers should pursue their work. In his journals, Emerson wrote this: Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid …
December 15, 2021
Reader’s Corner: PW 2021 Graphic Novel Critics Poll
Every year, all us lucky critics at PW Comics Week vote on what we thought were the best graphic novels of the year. Some years, it’s tricky combing through all the great work. Other years, there’s a lot of great work but one or two titles stand out and make our job relatively easy. 2021 …
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December 12, 2021
Writer’s Desk: Remember to Live
For obvious reasons, we read writers about writing because, well, who else are you going to ask? We like to look to those we love, and maybe occasionally to those who we may not love so much but because we think: Damn, look at how he’s done, how did he do that? Which brings us …
December 10, 2021
Reader’s Corner: Best Books of 2021
The good folks over at PopMatters just put up their annual Best Books feature. It’s got pages and pages of great fiction and non-fiction reads. The link is here, you can see what my selections were above. Here are some other great runners-up that I read this year and highly recommend: FICTION Land of Big …
December 5, 2021
Writer’s Desk: Listen, But Do What You Want
All writers need advice. Working in the garret of their own imagination provides the raw material, but never going outside and finding out what somebody might think will generally lead to subpar results … or a self-published novel filled with spelling errors and plot holes. But, since nothing is easy, all writers also need to …
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November 28, 2021
Writer’s Desk: Make It Shorter
Writers like the great Andre Dubus (whose wrenching New England stories of love and agony put Raymond Carver to shame) choose a lonely and difficult road when they decide to master the short story rather than the novel. But the form does lend itself to those who prefer concision. It is one thing to go …
November 24, 2021
Screening Room: ‘Dean Martin: King of Cool’
If there is a celebrity who defines just how different postwar American culture was from today, it might be Dean Martin. Frequently misremembered as a mere lounge singer who acted in a few movies, Martin defined a certain kind of nightclub cool back when that didn’t mean bottle service. Tom Donohue’s Dean Martin: King of …
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November 21, 2021
Writer’s Desk: Be Intentional
There is a lot of writing in the new Wes Anderson movie The French Dispatch. After all, it is about a magazine. The editor, Arthur Howitzer Jr., played by Bill Murray, is a grumpy but accommodating sort, the sort who complains constantly while still carrying inside him a deep and abiding love not just for …
