Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 89
April 28, 2018
Reader’s Corner: Investigating Your Father
In All the Answers, Michael Kupperman tells the story of the strange childhood of his father, a brilliant professor who in his youth starred on a hugely popular wartime radio show called Quiz Kids. It’s an engrossing and emotional personal history in which Kupperman discovers more about his reticent father on the Internet than through living with …
Reader’s Corer: Investigating Your Father
In All the Answers, Michael Kupperman tells the story of the strange childhood of his father, a brilliant professor who in his youth starred on a hugely popular wartime radio show called Quiz Kids. It’s an engrossing and emotional personal history in which Kupperman discovers more about his reticent father on the Internet than through living with …
April 26, 2018
Screening Room: ‘Let the Sunshine In’
In the latest from Claire Denis (White Material), Juliette Binoche plays an artist who is unlucky in love but doesn’t let that stop her from trying again, and again, and… Let the Sunshine In is opening this week in limited release. My review is at Film Journal International: Not long after the awkward lovemaking scene that …
April 25, 2018
Reader’s Corner: ‘Russian Roulette’
Michael Isikoff and David Corn’s new book Russian Roulette is, well, timely. My review is at PopMatters: The intent here was not to write an all-inclusive study of the history of the Washington-Moscow power dynamic, the full legacy of Trump’s law-skirting business dealings, or the noxious way those two elements have meshed together. Something like that wouldn’t …
April 22, 2018
Writer’s Desk: Leave Out More Than You Put Down
One of the greatest writers of our time, John McPhee, had a lot to say about the writing process. A lot of it boils down to hard work, research, and edit, edit, edit. Here’s a few tips: Writing is selection. When you are making notes you are forever selecting. I left out more than I …
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April 19, 2018
Quote of the Day: The Bowie Train
As part of the Brooklyn Museum’s blockbuster exhibition “David Bowie is,” an entire New York subway station has been Bowie-fied. One element of the takeover is special Bowie-branded MetroCards. This was announced by the transit authority, which gloriously tweeted “Rail Control to Major Tom”:
Nota Bene: The St. Louis Accent
In Edward McCleland’s book How to Speak Midwestern, there’s a lot to learn about the intricacies and subdivisions of the American Midwestern accent. Take this article, which McCleland adapted from the book, on the history of how the folks in St. Louis speak: In 1904, the year it hosted the World’s Fair and the Olympics, St. …
April 18, 2018
Reader’s Corner: Kanye’s Writing a Book. On Philosophy
Kanye West says he’s writing a book of philosophy called Break the Simulation. Because that’s where we’re at right now. (Any bets it will claim reality is just a Matrix-like computer simulation?) Per Entertainment Weekly: I’ve got this philosophy — or let’s say it’s just a concept because sometimes philosophy sounds too heavy-handed … It takes you out …
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April 15, 2018
Writer’s Desk: Read It Again
What looks like your best work ever at two in the morning can seem like dehydrated swill the next morning. It can be a letdown, but that second look is crucial, as is the third, and the fourth, and the… In this discussion about his writing process on “The Storm“—the article that became The Perfect Storm—Sebastian …
April 12, 2018
Nota Bene: Afrofuturism in Chicago
There’s an exhibition right now at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago called “In Their Own Form.” According to the museum, it explores “the myriad ways blackness might hope to exist without the imposition of oppression, racism and stereotypes ever-present in Western cultures, mediated through Afrofuturist themes including time-travel and escapism.” The Guardian had a …
