Archive for November, 2011

Noted: William T. Vollmann

November 26, 2011 | 9 Comments

I believe in the American myth that it is both admirable and even possible to devote one’s life to a private dream. The probability of failing oneself, either through laziness, incompetence or bad luck, or else, worse yet, through dreaming what one only imagined one desired, is terrifying. All the same, you had no more obligation to public dreams which dreamed you wrongly.—William T. Vollmann, Riding Toward Everywhere I believe Vollmann is some kind of genius, as well as being …

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Nina Hamberg’s memoir ‘Grip’

November 20, 2011 | 2 Comments

After being assaulted in her own bedroom by a masked intruder when she was a teen, Hamberg found her relationships with men complicated, to say the least. In this thoughtful memoir, she shares the victories and defeats that shaped those relationships in vivid detail. Introspective without lapsing into solipsism . . .Soundly edited, focused and well-crafted, Hamburg’s memoir is an examination of what it means to be a strong, independent woman, and how we often manage to lead ourselves astray …

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Rampant use of the term ‘narrative’

November 15, 2011 | 4 Comments

I want to raise the question of what the world thinks “narrative” means, what educated media commentators and writers mean by it, and what relationship does the widespread use of “narrative” have to do with the use of the term narrative journalism?—Gerald Grow, “The Invasion of the Term ‘Narrative’ “ Gerald Grow, now retired, a Shakespeare scholar who ended up teaching journalism at Florida A & M University, keeps an eclectic and useful web site about writing and teaching. It brims …

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David Foster Wallace’s fancy style

November 8, 2011 | 9 Comments

Below is an excerpt from John Jeremiah Sullivan’s interesting review in GQ of David Foster Wallace’s posthumous novel The Pale King (actually a review of DFW himself). When he speaks of “plain” writing, Sullivan apparently is alluding to Annie Dillard’s distinction, in her book Living by Fiction (reviewed on this blog), between “fine” and “plain” writing. She admires both but seems to prefer plain, the category into which her own lyric style falls, and to consider it the appropriate modern and …

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Lane redux: ‘Tower Heist’ & VOD

November 4, 2011 | 3 Comments

The wit of Anthony Lane, like the sex life of Grace Kelly, is one of those refined but rustic matters that we can admire readily, and dissect in detail, but never really hope to understand. Or emulate, alas. But he’s fun to imitate. Here’s the lead of Prince Anthony’s review of Tower Heist in this week’s New Yorker (November 7): At the risk of invoking Freud, you have to wonder why movie stars are attracted to big, long films about …

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