January 2006
7 posts
1 tag
Feeling Minnesota
T. and I just returned from a terrific weekend in Minneapolis, where my older brother and his family are happily planted. Highlights (excluding hanging with the kids, which is the coolest — two jr. hockey games in two days): the Walker Art Center, whose stellar collection (Rothko, Warhol, de Kooning, Close, Kline, Newman, plus newbies like Julie Mehretu) well outdid its talked-about...
1 tag
Defending McCarthy's Latest
Even though I wrote somewhat critically of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, I quite liked Roger D. Hodge’s defense of it in the February 2006 Harper’s. Hodge is responding to James Wood, Joyce Carol Oates, and others who declared the novel, in short, a slight thriller. Hodge writes:
Perhaps it is not so unusual for major writers to receive bad reviews for good...
1 tag
Adapting Nicely to Success
If you don’t already envy writer Susan Orlean for her success — New Yorker contributor; Orchid Thief writer; portrayed by Meryl Streep in Adaptation; website designed by pre-“Kottke” Jason Kottke — you can now do so for her magnificent new house. Take the audio slideshow.
1 tag
Adapting Nicely to Success
If you don’t already envy writer Susan Orlean for her success — New Yorker contributor; Orchid Thief writer; portrayed by Meryl Streep in Adaptation; website designed by pre-“Kottke” Jason Kottke — you can now do so for her magnificent new house. Take the audio slideshow.
1 tag
Dead Man Typing
Sean “Forgive my compromised sense of humor, but I did want to answer our host’s question about who Jude Law is. He’s one of our finest actors” Penn is razzed in one of the funnieset pieces I’ve seen in The Onion in a while: “Sean Penn Demands To Know What Asshole Took SeanPenn@gmail.com.”
The paid full-page advertisement, addressed to ‘a certain...
1 tag
Chan's Return
In anticipation of Cat Power’s forthcoming record, The Greatest, here’s a few really fine lines from Ben Ratliff’s “The Slacker Divas’ 10th Anniversary Gift,” in today’s NYT:
Hers was a hurt, disembodied, voice, operating on lulling frequencies over draggy tempos, like old Neil Young without the sense of direction. She sang about being all jammed up...
2 tags
Time to Throw Down
Just one of the things to say on the James Frey mess: When you decide to start out your career spouting off in interviews this way — “I don’t give a fuck what Jonathan Safran whatever-his-name or what David Foster Wallace does. I don’t give a fuck what any of those people do. I don’t hang out with them, I’m not friends with them, I’m not part of the...