Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 90
April 10, 2018
Reader’s Corner: Bookstores Versus Nazis
In 2016, neo-Nazis marched through a Berlin neighborhood near the Tucholsky Bookstore. Then they marched again. The bookstore started organizing. From the New York Times: By last summer, when a third march through this neighborhood was announced, the group was ready: They had teamed up with “Berlin Against Nazis,” a city-funded organization that targets racism …
April 8, 2018
Writer’s Desk: Discover Something
In February 1963, Esquire published “Ten Thousand Words a Minute” by Norman Mailer. Ostensibly a piece about the Sonny Liston–Floyd Patterson heavyweight fight in Chicago, Mailer as usual flailed all over the place, subject-wise, from the Mafia to America and back again. Along the way, he delivered this: Writing is of use to the psyche only …
April 6, 2018
Nota Bene: Can Books Teach Empathy?
From Jessa Crispin in The Baffler: Reading Joanna Russ’s How to Suppress Women’s Writing, I wondered, what the hell is it going to take? For decades we have had these types of critiques … And yet still we have critics like Jonathan Franzen speculating on whether Edith Wharton’s physical beauty (or lack of it, as is …
April 2, 2018
Screening Room: ‘The China Hustle’
My review of the new documentary The China Hustle, playing now in limited release, is at Film Journal International: Threaded with booming music, slashing scare-cuts, and talking heads throwing around phrases like “financial tsunami,” Jed Rothstein’s documentary The China Hustle is stylistically easy to dismiss as just another scare story for nonfiction junkies always on the lookout for the …
April 1, 2018
Writer’s Desk: Keep Your Day Job
Oscar Wilde made this point in this letter from 1890, right around the time he was achieving success: The best work in literature is always done by those who do not depend on it for their daily bread and the highest form of literature, Poetry, brings no wealth to the singer. It’s great to not …
March 26, 2018
TV Room: ‘The Handmaid’s Tale: Season 1’
The first season of The Handmaid’s Tale is out on DVD now. My review is at PopMatters: A friend who didn’t know much about The Handmaid’s Tale, either the terrifying series or the even darker Margaret Atwood novel it was adapted from, was surprised when I called it an alternate history. All he knew was glimpses of the …
March 25, 2018
Writer’s Desk: Get Your Tires Changed
It’s generally a bad idea to go to Facebook for—well, anything, really—but sometimes inspiration strikes. Buzzfeed just wrote about a woman who, while waiting to get her tires changed, managed to knock out a few pages. The location (Tires, Tires, Tires) seemed to help: Amy felt that that working at Tires Tires Tires was helping …
March 23, 2018
Screening Room: ‘Isle of Dogs’
Featuring all the usual suspects (Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton) plus Bryan Cranston, a lot of dry canine humor, and truckloads of Japanese cultural references from taiko drumming to Akira Kurosawa flicks, Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs is, well, the sum total of all those parts. Isle of Dogs is playing now. My review is …
March 22, 2018
Screening Room: ‘Ismael’s Ghosts’
Featuring a killer gathering of performers, from Mathieu Amalric to Charlotte Gainsbourg and Marion Cotillard, the new movie from Arnaud Desplechin, Ismael’s Ghosts, opens this week. My review is at Film Journal International: If a person who had just seen Ismael’s Ghosts were asked, “Did you like the movie?” they could be tempted to respond, “Which one?” There is the romance between …
March 19, 2018
Nota Bene: Impeaching the People
From Andrew Sullivan’s essay on two new books about the impeachment process: The founders knew that without a virtuous citizenry, the Constitution was a mere piece of paper and, in Madison’s words, “no theoretical checks — no form of government can render us secure.” Franklin was blunter in forecasting the moment we are now in: …
