Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 64
April 1, 2020
Quote of the Day: Money and Books
Per the COVID-19 fundraising campaign for Evanstons Bookends & Beginnings: Q: Know how you can make a small fortune selling books?A: Start with a large fortune.
March 31, 2020
Reader’s Corner: American Science Fiction in the ’60s
If youre looking for a good book or eight to spend your shelter-in-place weeks with, the Library of America is a good place to start. My review of their big and gutsy boxed set American Science Fiction of the 1960s including everything from groundbreaking Samuel R. Delany space opera to proto-feminist work from Joanna
Continue reading Readers Corner: American Science Fiction in the 60s
March 30, 2020
Reader’s Corner: Buy a Book Today
We will lose a lot in these next months. Weve already lost too much. One thing we dont need to lose is our independent bookstores. You have watched all the episodes of Norsemen. Ive watched them twice. Now we need books If there were ever a time to take a few extra moments to order through
March 29, 2020
Writer’s Desk: Terrence McNally
The recently late Terrence McNally wrote many many plays. Some were great (Love! Valor! Compassion!) and some others were good but less than great (Ragtime, The Visit). In any event, McNally who passed away this past week from coronavirus-related complications did what vanishingly few writers have ever done: Make a living on Broadway.
March 24, 2020
Screening Room: ‘Resistance’
Did you ever think you would see a movie in which General Patton introduces his battle-wearied soldiers to a performance by Marcel Marceau? Or that the world-famous mime spent much of World War II spiriting Jewish orphans out of France to safety? You get all that and more in the far-from-perfect but still satisfying new
Screening Room: 'Resistance'
Did you ever think you would see a movie in which General Patton introduces his battle-wearied soldiers to a performance by Marcel Marceau? Or that the world-famous mime spent much of World War II spiriting Jewish orphans out of France to safety? You get all that and more in the far-from-perfect but still satisfying new
March 22, 2020
Writer's Desk: Start with a Cold Shower
The Atlantics James Parker wrote recently about how most of his writing days used to start: Id wake up, smoldering and sighing, reel out of bed and into the kitchen, and put the kettle on. Then Id think: Well, now what? Time would go granular, like in a Jack Reacher novel, but less exciting. Five minutes at
March 18, 2020
Screening Room: ‘Blow the Man Down’
My review of the new movie Blow the Man Down which starts this Friday on Amazon ran at Slant Magazine: Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudys Blow the Man Down starts on a literally self-aware note. The opening sequence shows the fishermen of a coastal Maine hamlet not just hard at work netting, spiking, and
Screening Room: 'Blow the Man Down'
My review of the new movie Blow the Man Down which starts this Friday on Amazon ran at Slant Magazine: Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudys Blow the Man Down starts on a literally self-aware note. The opening sequence shows the fishermen of a coastal Maine hamlet not just hard at work netting, spiking, and
March 16, 2020
TV Room: ‘The Plot Against America’
In Philip Roths 2004 novel The Plot Against America, its 1940 and Hitler is rampaging across Europe. Only in America, Franklin Roosevelt is facing serious political competition: fascist sympathizer and popular hero Charles Lindbergh. A Jewish family in Newark, drawn in part from Roths childhood, starts realizing they may have to chose between fleeing to
