Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 72
September 1, 2019
Writer’s Desk: Ignore ‘The Elements of Style’
Any writer who has made at least a passing effort to improve their work is familiar with the lessons gleaned from Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. The slim little handbook has been featured on curricula since it first came out in 1959. Following its own advice, the book is pithy, to the point, and …
Continue reading Writer’s Desk: Ignore ‘The Elements of Style’
August 30, 2019
Quote of the Day: What Jim Mattis Didn’t Say
Former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, one of those adults we keep being told are keeping things in the White House from being even worse than they are, has a new book out: Call Sign Chaos. If this essay in the Wall Street Journal, which Mattis and his co-author Bing West adapted from the book, …
Continue reading Quote of the Day: What Jim Mattis Didn’t Say
August 29, 2019
Screening Room: ‘Official Secrets’
In the new thriller from Gavin Hood (Rendition), Keira Knightley plays the real-life whistle-blower who tried to stop the UK from bending to US pressure to cook up intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Based on Marcia and Thomas Mitchell’s book The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War, Official Secrets opens this …
August 28, 2019
Song of the Day: Muppet Tom Waits
“Tango ‘Til They’re Sore” by Tom Waits. As visually interpreted by Rowlf (originally a Jim Henson interpretation of a Waits-ian pianoman), Kermit, and the Muppet gang. In black and white, of course:
August 25, 2019
Writer’s Desk: Persevere
Some days it comes. The words flow, you forget to look up, and before you know it, the whole morning has passed and you have five good new pages. Some days it does not. Nothing comes. Everything sounds terrible. You write and delete and rewrite the same two lines before getting up and going for …
August 19, 2019
Reader’s Corner: ‘The City in the Middle of the Night’
My review of Charlie Jane Anders’ novel The City in the Middle of the Night was published at Rain Taxi Review of Books: The City in the Middle of the Night, is precisely the kind of novel that benefits from being called speculative fiction rather than science fiction, which can still seem pejorative to some readers. So …
Continue reading Reader’s Corner: ‘The City in the Middle of the Night’
August 18, 2019
Writer’s Desk: Don’t Be a Menace
According to novelist Maria Semple, when her first novel, This One is Mine, came out, the notices were good but the sales were not. So she retreated into herself, stopped writing, and blamed everything and everybody but herself. Then one day, a friend told her something: Maria, you’re a writer. Writers must write. If you don’t …
August 15, 2019
Screening Room: ‘Where’d You Go, Bernadette?’
Cate Blanchett stars in Richard Linklater’s adaptation of Maria Semple’s beloved novel Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, which opens this week. My review is at The Playlist: Once upon a time, Bernadette was a rising ingenue in the architecture world, with a knack for quirky science-fiction designs and looking dazzling in old photographs (the bangs and artfully dangled cigarettes …
Continue reading Screening Room: ‘Where’d You Go, Bernadette?’
August 11, 2019
Writer’s Desk: Stop Complaining
In honor of the great Toni Morrison, who passed this week at 88, here’s some well-needed advice from a woman who was not just a great novelist and inspiration to millions, but a sharp-eyed editor and teacher who did not care for complaints. Per a Salon interview from 1998, in which Morrison talked about whether …
August 7, 2019
Screening Room: ‘Is Gone with the Wind a Classic?’
My article ‘Is Gone with the Wind a Classic? Or How Things Change’ went up yesterday over at Eyes Wide Open: A couple years back, a Memphis theater decided that, because of complaints, they were not going to show Gone with the Wind again. One would imagine conservatives would appreciate a small business not wanting to anger its customers. …
Continue reading Screening Room: ‘Is Gone with the Wind a Classic?’
