December 2011
47 posts
15 tags
Notes on Theatre
Today The Dial is guest-written by playwright John Steppling, who has produced an evocative, idiosyncratic, wide-ranging set of “Notes on Theatre,” from which I have extracted the following series of aphorisms. They hearken back to the manifestos of the modernists in their radical rethinking of their subject and their manic and principled disregard for what you or I might think. ...
9 tags
Mentors: Jervey Tervalon and Bob Blaisdell on...
BOB BLAISDELL and JERVEY TERVALON recall MARVIN MUDRICK, the best American literary critic you’ve never heard of (with some input from the man himself). Apple © Ria Hills This week’s Mentor Series includes paintings of apples by artists who often complete a painting each day. From a series originally published on our blog [click here], curated by C.P. Heiser. ¤ Marvin Mudrick created the...
10 tags
Letter from Cairo
FREDERICK DEKNATEL Cairo 2011 © Frederick Deknatel
“Why are we destroying our own city with our own hands?” the architect Nairy Hampikian asked last month in Magaz, an Egyptian design magazine. She was speaking of the decades of poor planning and infrastructure in Cairo under Hosni Mubarak’s regime. In the same publication, architect May al-Ibrashy wrote, “Cairo, always fast, has now become...
10 tags
Mentors: Geoff Nicholson on J.H. Prynne
GEOFF NICHOLSON recalls the daunting yet illuminating experience of having the famously inscrutable Cambridge poet J. H. PRYNNE as his Director of Studies. Apple ©
Elin Pendleton This week’s Mentor Series includes paintings of apples by artists who often complete a painting each day. From a series originally published on our blog [click here], curated by C.P. Heiser. ¤
I sometimes say that...
6 tags
Mentors: Rita Williams on Alison Leslie Gold
RITA WILLIAMS pens an appreciation of her mentor, ALISON LESLIE GOLD. Apple ©
Jos van Riswick This week’s Mentor Series includes paintings of apples by artists who often complete a painting each day. From a series originally published on our blog [click here], curated by C.P. Heiser. ¤
When I first heard of Alison Leslie Gold in the late eighties, I had no idea what a visionary author she...
3 tags
Siddhartha Deb: A Teacher of a Different Kind
In the ninth installment of the LARB’s Writers on Teachers series, Morten Høi Jensen discusses Siddhartha Deb, a rising star of the New York literary scene whose new nonfiction book on contemporary India, The Beautiful and the Damned, has met with some controversy (its first chapter was expurgated in the country to which the book is devoted, thanks to a court injunction). Edmund Wilson once...
30 tags
Clear Lines
JENNY HENDRIX
on the afterlife of Tintin. Tintin (and Snowy) Copyright © HERGÉ / Moulinsart 2011 — All Rights Reserved.
On March 3rd, 1983, the French daily Libération ran under an unusual cover: Against a black background, as though seen through a telescope, a circular drawing portrayed a cowlicked boy lying face down in the snow while a white fox terrier keened brokenly beside him....
Radar LARB
The Boxing Day Swim (courtesy fimb and flickr creative commons) Football and foxhunts, department store sales and epic sessions in the pub: as this article points out it’s a wonder Americans haven’t adopted Boxing Day for themselves (never mind it’s that other kind of football). O well. You still have the blips at Radar LARB (most Mondays): The Full-Stop editors: The Situation...
7 tags
Mentors: Clarissa Romano on Barry Hannah
Palette Knife Apple © Rob Hazzard This week’s Mentor Series includes paintings of apples by artists who often complete a painting each day. This week and next, we present reminiscences of great mentors and teachers, from a series originally published on our blog [click here], curated by C.P. Heiser. Today,
Los Angeles Review of Books editor CLARISSA ROMANO remembers novelist, short story writer...
17 tags
The Ghost of Books: Part V
JENNIFER EGAN, PADGETT POWELL, ANTOINE WILSON, MATT WEILAND, and DINAH LENNEY
Image © Lisa Jane Persky for Los Angeles Review of Books JENNIFER EGAN Ghost of Books Past:
For many years, I believed that my favorite novel was Catch-22. I remembered reading it as a teenager and being transported by the interweaving narratives and impressionistic style. It seemed a perfect amalgam of radical...
4 tags
Passionate Utterances: Learning from Stanley...
The seventh installment of LARB’s Writers On Teachers series: Sianne Ngai describes her time studying with Stanley Cavell. Find the whole series in one convenient sidebar near the top of the blog. I was a grad student in English at Harvard in the mid-90s, but physically there for just three years, anxious to move to Brooklyn for a relationship as soon as I became ABD. In that brief but...
10 tags
The Ghost of Books: Part IV
JANE SMILEY, MARK HASKELL SMITH, MORGAN MACGREGOR,
CULLEN GALLAGHER, and CHRIS KRAUS
Image © Lisa Jane Persky for Los Angeles Review of Books JANE SMILEY The Ghost of Dickens Past:
In seventh grade, we were assigned Oliver Twist. I was in the A section. Our teacher, Miss Fieselman, was a strict and humorless woman. We had two weeks to read the novel. The print was much smaller than the print...
22 tags
The Ghost of Books: Part III
MEGHAN DAUM, SESSHU FOSTER, LAILA LALAMI,
BEN LOORY, and CASEY WALKER Image © Lisa Jane Persky for Los Angeles Review of Books MEGHAN DAUM Present
Right now I’m reading a lot of Mary McCarthy. I have an assignment to write a long essay about her and I’ve been immersing myself in her and it’s just great. I’d read a biography and some of her journals years ago, but not much of the fiction....
The Long and the Short of It: Writings on...
The Fat Years, by Chan Koonchung Cover image for the English-language translation, from Nan A. Talese. LARB contributor and China matters specialist Jeffrey Wasserstrom offers multiple tiers of recommendation for year-end reading. ’Tis the season for best books lists, which—to invoke a Chinese saying—sprout up like bamboo shoots after a spring rain. Just in case somebody asked, I was...
8 tags
The Ghost of Books: Part II
BEN EHRENREICH, STEPHEN ELLIOTT, MATTHEW SPECKTOR, MARY OTIS, and AYELET WALDMAN Image © Lisa Jane Persky for Los Angeles Review of Books BEN EHRENREICH
My tastes haven’t changed much since I was about eight years old. Back then my favorite books were all about lonely children who in their wanderings happened across a mysterious portal that allowed them to slip away from the drab...
18 tags
The Ghost of Books: Part I
SVEN BIRKERTS, GARY PHILLIPS, and JULIE CLINE Image © Lisa Jane Persky for Los Angeles Review of Books
“The Ghost of Books: Past, Future, and Present” is an experiment not in terror and not necessarily Dickensian. We’ve asked certain writers to respond to the three times (or tenses) in the subtitle, or simply to the title. In “The Ghost of Books Past,” we learn what a...
4 tags
LARB Podcast #1: Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti
The authors of The Chairs Are Where the People Go
interviewed by TOM LUTZ
[Click on book cover to play audio;
iTunes version coming soon]
This is the first episode of the new Los Angeles Review of Books podcast series (soon to be available on iTunes). We hope these podcasts will go beyond the standard promotional Q&A pleasantries and promote genuine intellectual and philosophical...
7 tags
Philosophical Improvisations
JON COTNER
on Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti’s The Chairs Are Where the People Go.
For a podcast interview with Glouberman and Heti by Tom Lutz, click here.
Black Whole Conference ©
Michel de Broin, 2006 (72 chairs) Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti The Chairs Are Where the People Go: How to Live, Work, and Play in the City
Faber & Faber, July 2011. 192 pp.
At Pratt Institute,...
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Slavoj Žižek’s praise for Ralph Fiennes’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus: “For his forthcoming film adaptation, Ralph Fiennes (with the writer John Logan) has done the impossible, confirming in the process T S Eliot’s claim that Coriolanus is superior to Hamlet. He has fully broken out of the closed circle of interpretative options and presented Coriolanus...
17 tags
L.A. Woman
STEFFIE NELSON
on Eve Babitz’s Hollywood.
Painting © Maria Przyszychowska from a Photograph by Julian Wasser
In Eve Babitz’s third book, Sex and Rage, the main character Jacaranda Leven comes upon a black-and-white photograph hanging in a grand Hollywood penthouse apartment, next to “a David Hockney swimming pool, and a huge pornographic watercolor by John Altoon.” Shot by Julian...
