November 2009 Archives
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The Golem Blog
I Meme Mine
One post in, and it’s time to assess what went right and what went wrong; or it would be, if a questionnaire didn’t take precedence. The Golem gets tagged by the internet.
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Gallery
The Art of the American Snapshot
Scott Hunt’s drawings take inspiration from mysterious, uncomfortable, hilarious, and sad moments in amateur photography and give them new life.
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The Coffee Table
Pretty Boys
Reportedly Andy Warhol started Interview Magazine when he was refused press credentials to the (inaugural) 1969 New York Film Festival. Though it began its life as a newsprint quarterfold, by the 198...
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New Finds
A Good Best
There must be some explanation for the fact that it wasn't until 2008 that someone had the clarity of thought to anthologize their well-considered selection of the best writing on the...
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Of Recent Note
Untraditional Traditions
Year after year, it’s the unique ways we celebrate the holidays that make them worth celebrating. Our staff and readers share their uncommon customs.
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Serious Fun
Accept No Substitutes
Allow me to speculate that if you found your way to this space and stayed on, that you are in no danger of wasting your time reading the latest product...
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The Coffee Table
For Children of All Ages
As the father of an 11-year-old boy, I am ever vigilant for books and other reading materials with which to influence him. Thus, I find my way into areas of...
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Gallery
Between Floating and Falling
Between plummeting and floating, we’re cut loose from the earth but still part of the world. Elijah Gowin’s images of bodies suspended combine traditional photography with new technology to illustrate the tranquility and the fear of falling.
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Iconography
Good Sports
Typically, sports biographies fall into two categories of uselessness: takedowns (e.g., A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez) or tell-alls (Jose Canseco's Juiced). However, recently there have been a...
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Back in the Day
More From Gore Vidal
Speaking of the incomparable Gore Vidal, his newest book Gore Vidal: Snapshots in History's Glare (Abrams Books) is, if you treasure this sort of thing (which I do), an amazing...
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Interview
RoseLee Goldberg
RoseLee Goldberg is an art historian, curator, and author of Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present. In 2004, she founded PERFORMA, a non-profit arts organization that hosts a biennial series...
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Apropos of Nothing
Good News
(Photo by Robert Birnbaum) Old pal and Hunter College mentor Colum McCann , author of Dancer and Zoli won the National Book Award for fiction for his exuberant recent opus Let...
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Personal Essays
The Game of Love
Anyone who says video games shouldn’t appeal to adults, let alone women, has never flirted with General Carth Onassi. Exploring a virtual courtship.
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Writing About Writers
Creative Criticism 101
J.C. Hallman, editor of an inspired anthology, The Story About the Story: Great Writers Explore Great Literature (Tin House), has already exhibited a commendable ambidexterity with his nonfiction (soon...
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New York, New York
Joan Didion Crosses the Street
For a generation of young writers, Joan Didion is more than an icon: She tells them how the world was when their parents were young.
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Current Reads
So Far From God
Novelist Philip Caputo (Acts of Faith, A Rumor of War) skillfully interweaves the post-9/11 reality of drug cartels and immigrant hordes with the early 20th-century world of the Mexican-U.S....
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Rare Medium
The Sorry and the Pithy
Though mayhem, war, mass murder, civil unrest, homicidal acts of God (known as natural disasters), famine, plague, and genocide seem to be growth industries, the population of brave men and...
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Announcements
What Are Your Nontraditional Traditions?
We want to hear about the unique, unusual, creative, strange, interesting ways you and your family, friends, and household pets celebrate the holidays. Is there an accidental custom your family...
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Profiles
By Any Other Name
Writer seeks pen name: something simple, nothing dippy, and preferably one that avoids implying a lawyer who savors puns.
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Gallery
Slow Photography
A series of portraits of a rural town in Italy where Douglas Gayeton lived, worked, cooked, fell in love, and took pictures—tons of pictures, many of which were then stitched together and inscribed with captions, names, anecdotes, and recipes to tell his story of assimilation.
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Writing About Writers
That Write Stuff
Now that I am more kindly disposed toward The Paris Review--the literary institution founded by George Plimpton and a cohort of his pals back in the wild and crazy 1950s--since...
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Genre Genre Genre
Boston After Dark
As long as I am banging the drum for short fiction, let me apprise you of the latest addition to the Akashic Books Noir Series: Boston Noir edited by Boston...
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Current Reads
Get Shorties
While preparing my chat with American short fiction samurai Tobias Wolff for publication, I realized that though I greatly appreciate short stories I have not been paying sufficient attention to...
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The Coffee Table
Eco Eco
In Boston the gem known as the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum once hosted the Eye of the Beholder, artist-in-residencies that invited diverse creators such as children's book illustrator Ashley Bryan,...
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Interview
Kevin Moffett
Kevin Moffett is the author of the short-story collection Permanent Visitors, and his stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, Tin House, and twice in The Best American Short Stories. Until...
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Personal Essays
Making the Bird
To entertain themselves and their friends, two brothers formed a band, Birdhead. Now one traces the history of “the critically acclaimed power duo from Rancho Cucamonga.”
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Personal Essays
My First Sonogram
A television news report begets a routine doctor’s appointment begets a personal health scare.
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Back in the Day
Is It Good for the Jews?
Let's face it, the Jews have long been a troublesome people for the rest of the planet. Of course, that topic or virtually anything to do with Jews is a...
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Birnbaum v.
Tobias Wolff
Our man in Boston talks to Tobias Wolff about the art of revision, how writing programs are good for training skilled readers, and why Robert Olen Butler still signs stock.
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Gallery
Pakistan Now
Photographer and designer Kurt Dietrich Wilberding traveled to Pakistan to capture a more intimate side of life than what’s normally seen in the newspapers.
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The Golem Blog
Test Post
Rather than shopping or a pottery workshop, blogging shows promise as a fun, “couple-y” activity. THE GOLEM writes the entry that took a thousand years.
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Iconography
Robert Altman’s One Long Film
Film (theatrical and television) director Robert Altman, auteur of some 40 movies (you know what I mean, the stuff that, during what may one day be referred to as America's Golden...
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Interview
Abhay Khosla
Abhay Khosla is a regular contributor to The Savage Critics, a review of comic books. He’s made a foray into writing comics, and his absurdist, scatalogical adaptation of Bram...
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Little Magazines
Relentless Yawp
Though I grew up in Chicago reading the Sun-Times and the Daily News from a precociously early age (and thus claim a historical interest), I haven't decided yet whether the...
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Apropos of Nothing
The Party Line
One of the more poignant scenes in Bernardo Bertolucci's film The Conformist (based on the Alberto Moravia novel of the same name) has the character Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant) recalling...
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Current Reads
Question, Questions, Questions?
Amongst the incalculably lengthy list of authors who have not received their due (also an incalculable notion) you will find, with regularity, the name of Padgett Powell. Powell (Edisto), who...
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Diversions
Cloud of Atlases
Maps without legends may not be immediately informative, but determining what they represent is extremely fun. If you’re into that kind of thing, here’s a game for you.
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Genre Genre Genre
Police and Thieves
For 25 years Lou Manfredo was a functionary in the Brooklyn courts and it is clear the knowledge and culture he internalized there is ably and compellingly exhibited in his maiden...
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Opinions
A Common Nomenclature for Lego Families
Thousands of different Lego exist, yet when your seven-year-old asks for “a clippy bit,” you know exactly what to hand him. A breakdown of the atoms of a Lego universe.
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Rare Medium
Waiting for the Electrician
At almost any given moment one may stroll the streets of urban America (unfortunately, I can't speak for the hinterlands) and observe what appear to be human beings perambulating (the...
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Spoofs & Satire
I Cannot Accept This Award
Acceptance speeches are often great for moments of hubris and disaster. For anyone soon to win a prize, here’s a template best avoided.
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Gallery
We English
Simon Roberts shows what traveling around England in a motor home for six months will get you. Of course, it’s much more than that, but in a way it’s also that simple: a series of (exquisite) landscapes photographed in 2008 that depict a survey of Britons at leisure.