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 them in this space. Luckily, I have the 2009 edition of The Best American Short Stories at hand. As you
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, performance artist Lee Ming Wei, installation artist Joan Bankemper, photographer Abelardo Morell, and author Sandra Cisneros
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 minefield of issues especially since the Jews control the media and the banks and a speck of dust
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.
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 Age, was shown on very big screens in halls that held hundreds of people) was unarguably a
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 fulminating about the rapidly thinning forest of daily newspapers is misguided nostalgia, crass self-interest (yes, there
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 his father's account of living in Munich in 1923 and encountering a diminutive, mustachioed man
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 teaches at the University of Florida and has collected plaudits from Ian Frazier and Barry Hannah to Saul Bellow, has
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 effort as a crime novelist in Rizzo's War (Minotaur Books). Especially noteworthy is his success in making
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 boulevards) while staring at their palms. This, you may guess, is the voodoo mojo of the smartphone in
