I’m back from my first-ever Four Cs in Chicago, and I wanted to let the sporting world know that I would have bet unlimited amounts of money on UCLA at halftime of the Gonzaga game. Despite being down by fifteen or however many it was, I was certain that there were going to come back [...]
Denis Johnson’s story “There Comes after Here,” published in the April 1972 Atlantic (which also features a disapproving review of Straw Dogs by David Denby, cf. his current NY’er review of V for Vendetta), ends with a woman, beset by the quasi-naturalistic forces stage-managed in A History of Violence having a religious revelation on her [...]
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While reading this article about the prospects of a nuclear Iran, I noted that Kennedy estimated the odds of a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Event as “”between 1 in 3 and even.” Using either that or some other potential apocalypse, can you think of fictional scenarios in which the world is somehow recreated [...]
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I’ve noticed that when a stage magician with my name is on your television, I get hundreds of google searches from you. Though I doubt you will find much of what you’re looking for here, I do want to mention that I’m working my way through all the volumes of Lynn Thorndike’s A History of [...]
I’ve taught some of Borges’s fictions in two out of three of my last classes and am spending this week on “The Immortal,” “The House of Asterion,” “The Zahir,” and “The Aleph.” I’d be interested in hearing from any of you who’ve taught Borges, particularly in an introductory course. How did it go, and how [...]
“Someone They Aren’t” Of all the movies that have made me sweat The ones that make me the most uncomfortable Are those in which a terrible fool pretends to be Someone they aren’t– Denis Johnson Squidbillies and 12oz Mouse probably represent the limit of human achievement in the televisual medium at this point in world [...]
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Here’s some of the evidence from this recent interview with Jimmy Carter: “My sartorial misjudgment becomes even more glaring when we arrive at the restaurant, a small and homely diner with bottles of Heinz ketchup and a basket of paper napkins on each table.” Heinz ketchup on the tables. Amazing how slowly time passes for [...]
