Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 88
June 3, 2018
Writer’s Desk: It’s Like Fishing
Here’s how Eric Idle—novelist, doggerelist, once and forever Python—described the act of writing: Writing and doing. It’s still what I love to do. To go to your chair first thing in the morning with a blank piece of paper and a pencil and find what is lurking in the depths of your unconscious. It’s fascinating. …
May 27, 2018
Writer’s Desk: Write Past the Moment
It’s almost impossible not to write in the moment. Even if you’re writing about 17th century mink trappers, unless you cut yourself off from the news completely—or use a version of that sensory deprivation chamber Jonathan Franzen likes to use—the present day is going to creep in. But while immediacy and relevance have their place, they …
May 20, 2018
Writer’s Desk: Get Out There
Tom Wolfe, the great conquistador of New Journalism who died last week at the age of 88, had a problem with modern fiction. For the most part, he thought it stunk. To his way of thinking, all the American novelists of the later 20th century were too stuck in their abstracted heads. That was why …
May 17, 2018
TV Room: ‘Fahrenheit 451’
Indie director Ramin Bahrani (Goodbye Solo, 99 Homes) takes a detour into the land of splashy classic literature adaptations with his take on the great Fahrenheit 451, which premieres on HBO this Saturday. My review is at The Playlist: There’s a lot left out in this noisy and luridly shot but thin adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s novel. A …
May 13, 2018
Writer’s Desk: Stay Out of Fashion
Just weeks before his assassination, President John F. Kennedy gave a speech at Amherst College in which he talked eloquently about the role of the artist in society: If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never …
May 9, 2018
Reader’s Corner: Box of Norman Mailer
My article on the new box set, Norman Mailer: The Sixties, is at The Millions: At nearly 1,400 pages packed into two volumes, it’s all too much at once, like a supercut of Mailer’s TV appearances, those bright dark eyes and halo hair, his machine-gun sentences snapped out one after the other until the white flag is …
May 6, 2018
Writer’s Desk: Get It Right
They say writers should keep it basic. Don’t do too much. Stay in your lane. That’s good advice, until it’s not. Jack Kerouac once wrote: One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple. This from one of America’s most industrious creators of run-on sentences. But still, Kerouac knew to keep …
May 1, 2018
Screening Room: ‘RBG’
For anybody who hasn’t read The Notorious RBG or hasn’t been keeping up on their social media updates for the past couple years, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the most buzzy octogenarian Supreme Court justice in the land. The new documentary RBG helps explains why. It opens this week. My review is at PopMatters: Here’s a fun fact to be …
April 30, 2018
Screening Room: Tribeca Film Festival 2018
The 2018 edition of the Tribeca Film Festival just wrapped up over the weekend. I covered some of the fest’s varied documentary offerings for The Playlist, reviews here: Harrowing War Crimes Doc ‘House Two’ is a Politically Charged ‘NCIS’ ‘The Feeling of Being Watched’: Paranoia in the Heartland Remarkable Ivory-Poaching Doc ‘When Lambs Become Lions’ Blurs …
April 29, 2018
Writer’s Desk: Philip Glass Drove a Cab
If you’re like most writers, you know that it almost never pays the bills. (The other writers know this, too, they just haven’t admitted it yet.) That means you need to keep working while writing. How do you do both? As usual, it’s whatever works for you. But flexibility is key. Take composer Philip Glass. …
