Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 9
October 27, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Identify With All Your Characters
eferencing D.H. Lawrence's thoughts on the subject, Amos Oz also made a point of resisting the urge writers (and often readers) have to take sides with their characters.
October 23, 2024
Screening Room: ‘Look Into My Eyes’
Lana Wilson’s soulful, patient, appropriately skeptical documentary takes psychics at their word but also peers behind the curtain in revealing ways.
October 22, 2024
Reader’s Corner: New York Comic Con 2024
On my way to last week’s New York Comic Con, I overheard an attendee telling a non-geek civilian that it was “bigger than San Diego.” I silently scoffed. Then I arrived at Javits. Not sure how the final attendance numbers worked out in this comic East Coast-West Coast beef, but given the thousands of people …
October 20, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Stay Open, Stay Confident
When he was interviewed by The Atlantic in the summer of 1958, Erskine Caldwell was just about the biggest author in America. The interviewer notes that Caldwell’s novel God’s Little Acre had sold over eight million copies, “more than any other novel written in our century.” An incredible achievement, especially for an author whose work …
October 13, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Write with Conviction and Humility
In a recent piece for the New Yorker that ranged from George Orwell’s Why I Write to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ new book The Message, Jay Caspian Kang grapples with a problem that can bedevil some of us who make words as a vocation: How much does our writing matter, and should it? Writers, dramatic and vain …
Continue reading Writer’s Desk: Write with Conviction and Humility
October 6, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Residency in Red Wing
Near the town of Red Wing, Minnesota is the estate of Dr. Alexander Pierce Anderson, who made some millions by creating things like Quaker Puffed Wheat. Since 1995, the Anderson Center has hosted residencies for artists from around the world. It costs $30 to apply. Selected writers will have two- or four-week residences at the …
October 3, 2024
TV Room: ‘Disclaimer’
My review of the new Apple TV series Disclaimer was just published at Slant Magazine: Alfonso Cuarón’s potboiler Disclaimer, an adaptation of the Renee Knight’s 2015 novel of the same name, begins with famed documentarian Catherine (Cate Blanchett) being fêted at an awards ceremony. Scenes of Catherine and her husband, Roger (Sacha Baron Cohen), living a …
September 29, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Do It, Don’t Talk About It
In her book Making a Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers, Carolyn See has a lot to say about how to survive and even thrive in the writing life. In part, she does this by keeping it simple. She includes practical asides about what will be demanded of you, though what she says …
September 26, 2024
Screening Room: ‘Megalopolis’
Francis Ford Coppola’s bonkers “fable” about the clash of dreams and cynicism, Megalopolis, has a potent but unfounded belief in its importance.
September 24, 2024
Reader’s Corner: ‘Polostan’
Stephenson packs everything readers might want in their characters into one woman and lets her run with it.
