Tag: capitalism

books, Interviews, Permanent Press4 Comments

An Interview with Marc Schuster

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What inspired you to write The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Super Girl? I was working on a paper in graduate school when I started reading a pair of books called The Steel Drug and Cocaine Changes. As the titles suggest, they were about cocaine, and they included case studies of people who had used and abused cocaine. Some of them were very compelling, but due to the nature of the books, the stories were also very fragmentary. With The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl I wanted to flesh out some of the details in a … Continue reading An Interview with Marc Schuster

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5000 Pages of Kissinger, 80s SFF, book reviews, books, books I'm reading, Critic's Notebook, Essays on Capital, film, Permanent Press, The Art of Reviewing, TVLeave a comment

What I’m Reading 2012 and Other Business

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What I’m Reading 2012 Overview: I’m currently reading five books.  Each poses certain challenges (in some cases, self-imposed challenges) to me as a reader, reviewer, critic, historian, and aesthete.  While New Year’s Resolutions get broken seconds after they’re uttered, these challenges will form an informal backbone to my reading schedule.  As it stands, I want to increase the frequency of my blog posts from bimonthly to weekly.  (The same goes for my other blog, Coffee is for Closers.)  The positive responses from readers has really inspired me to do more. As you’ll see with these challenges, I want to “raise … Continue reading What I’m Reading 2012 and Other Business

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The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom & Party Girl, by Marc Schuster

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Audrey Corcoran is unhappy, affected by the vague nameless malaise that creeps into those with thwarted ambitions and unrealized desires.  Audrey works at Eating Out, a “shopper magazine” one usually sees in grocery stores and restaurants.  In this case, the “magazine” – really a glorified press release and advertising delivery device – caters to the businesses on the Golden Mile, a strip of middlebrow chains and franchises.  The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom & Party Girl chronicles Audrey’s alienation and annoyance at the petty power games and trivialities in her comfortable middle class existence. Living with her two children, the … Continue reading The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom & Party Girl, by Marc Schuster

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80s SFF, film, nature1 Comment

80sSFF: Apocalypse Now (1979) and Apocalypse Now Redux (2001)

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The first part in a series dedicated to examining the science fiction and fantasy films from 1979 to 1989.  The series will investigate whether these films possess certain ineffable qualities missing from today’s films of the same genres. Kurtz: I expected someone like you. What did you expect? Are you an assassin? Willard: I’m a soldier. Kurtz: You’re neither. You’re an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill. Why are we beginning a series devoted to the science fiction and fantasy films of the 1980s with Apocalypse Now?  Francis Ford Coppola’s epic Vietnam War film holds the … Continue reading 80sSFF: Apocalypse Now (1979) and Apocalypse Now Redux (2001)

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film, miscellaneous, The InternetLeave a comment

New name, same blog

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What’s all this then?  As they say in boardrooms across this fair land of ours, it’s “time to take things to the next level.”  The Driftless Area Review now has a more memorable web address: https://driftlessareareview.com/ It’s easy to remember, you have less to type, and should help with Google searches.  If you’re a publisher or author, my contact information remain the same.  Make sure to update your bookmarks.     Continue reading New name, same blog

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book reviews, books1 Comment

Hav by Jan Morris

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Hav by the Welsh travel writer Jan Morris is a very Borgesian work, bringing to mind the Argentinean writer’s love for mirrors and labyrinths.  There is even a character named Dr. Borge and Hav’s major cultural motif is the labyrinth.  Morris achieves distinction in creating a place that goes beyond being a second-rate pastiche of Borges themes.  Unfortunately, the field of science fiction is riddled with examples of good ideas soured when executed.  Poor execution usually involves sloppy writing where the author received payment by the word. New York Review Books has released a stellar volume with Jan Morris’s Hav.  … Continue reading Hav by Jan Morris

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books, film, Interviews, The Internet2 Comments

An Interview with David Schmahmann, author of The Double Life of Alfred Buber

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Why is Alfred Buber an important character for modern readers? Alfred Buber’s story is a riff off several things: isolation, male loneliness, a feeling some of us may have that for others life is richer, more sensual, more rewarding than it ever will be for us. Buber is frozen by that feeling, by the sense that he is a spectator at his own life, shut out of any chance at love, at being wanted, at feeling full and satisfied. He mistakes these feelings, I think, for desire, and I believe many men do this: conflate loneliness with desire, as if … Continue reading An Interview with David Schmahmann, author of The Double Life of Alfred Buber

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Play Fair! The Art of Friendship and Relationship by Kimberly A. Taylor

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    One doesn’t have to walk far into a bookstore to get assaulted with self-help books and memoirs.  Much like people with blogs, everyone thinks they have something valuable to say.  In addition to memoirs by randomly generated Kardashians the upcoming election season brings with it the fatuous “campaign biography” ghostwritten by the candidate’s staffers not currently concocting an attack ad or planting a piece of journalism with a compliant member of the Fourth Estate.  It is with relief that Kimberly A. Taylor’s hybrid memoir/self-help book is available.  Play Fair! The Art of Relationship and Friendship presents the reader with … Continue reading Play Fair! The Art of Friendship and Relationship by Kimberly A. Taylor

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book reviews, books, film, food, Permanent Press1 Comment

The Double Life of Alfred Buber by David Schmahmann

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KUMAR(to Goldstein)Well, if you have the yellow fever tonight, there’s a rocking Asian party over at Princeton tonight. GOLDSTEIN Man, I have the yellow plague. There’s nothing sexier than a hot Asian chick…or dude for that matter… Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle (Danny Leiner, 2004), script by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing.  But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (1867) by Karl Marx A Woman of Property David Schmahmann … Continue reading The Double Life of Alfred Buber by David Schmahmann

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My Business Is to Create: Blake’s Infinite Writing by Eric G. Wilson

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Within the confines of 85 pages, Eric Wilson’s My Business Is to Create: Blake’s Infinite Writing offers a cornucopia for the aspirant writer.  The tiny book defies conventional categories, much like its subject, William Blake (1757 – 1827).  A Blake biography, a creative writing manual, and a map of influences, epigrams, and philosophy all come into play. William Blake was a poet and artist living in the Britain, who, like his contemporary the Marquis de Sade (1740 – 1814), lived between the Age of Enlightenment and the Romantic Era.  Blake grew up as a Christian Nonconformist and struggled with making … Continue reading My Business Is to Create: Blake’s Infinite Writing by Eric G. Wilson

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