Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 4

Screening Room: ‘It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley’

My review of the documentary It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley was published at Slant Magazine: …relates Jeff Buckley’s meteoric rise and early death in the 1990s through the adoring and wounded voices of his family, friends, and bandmates. Berg leavens their wistful memories with personal and concert footage, along with Buckley’s notebook jottings, ramblingly funny …

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Writer’s Desk: Be Good to Other Writers

Sherman Alexie has some advice for how to help out other writers: When you read a piece of writing that you admire, send a note of thanks to the author. Be effusive with your praise. Writing is a lonely business. Do your best to make it a little less lonely…

Screening Room: ‘Eddington’

My review of Eddington is at PopMatters: A comic neo-Western with a bent for hyperreality and savage satirical viewpoint, Eddington is set in the kind of remote, raggedy New Mexico town where people are on a first-name basis, the scattered businesses look dusty and on the verge of bankruptcy, and more than two cars on the same …

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Reader’s Corner: ‘The Martians’

David Baron’s pop history of the early Martian mania, The Martians, probes how deception, promoted by the fantasies of single-minded obsessives, predated Silicon Valley.

Writer’s Desk: Self-Doubt is Okay

In those moments when nothing seems to be working, some writers might imagine that for more successful (or at least productive) others who have spent years lashed to the desk, things came easily. They must have known they were great, yes? One of W. B. Yeats’ last poems, “The Circus Animals’ Desertion,” shows what a …

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Writer’s Desk: Trust Your Characters

Your character is always right.

Writer’s Desk: It Ain’t Easy, Kids

If he or she can be discouraged by anyone in this world from continuing to write, write, write—then forget it.

Writer’s Desk: Make It Natural

Writing poetry is an unnatural act. It takes great skill to make it seem natural.

Writer’s Desk: Copy from the Masters

Michael Moorcock is among the most prolific and influential British science fiction and fantasy writers of all time. He doesn’t seem to ever get stuck for inspiration. But when Moorcock needs ideas or advice on how to tell a story, he goes to the greats: Find an author you admire (mine was Conrad) and copy …

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Writer’s Desk: No Shame in Writing Fast

In his enthralling new biography on William F. Buckley, Sam Tanenhaus says the following about his subject’s approach to his work: Like so many writers he loathed the act of writing, but like very few he did it with speed and efficiency… Buckley spent a career making use of that efficiency. For many years, he …

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