Today’s book review at CCLaP: “Make It Stay” by Joan Frank, which I calls my favorite read so far of the year. The novel explores the lives of two couples in a small Northern California town as they encounter births, deaths, joys, and frustrations. I assert, “Frank’s highly polished literary prose is definitely worth your time.” Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: Make It Stay, by Joan Frank
After an overlong hiatus, “The Art of Reviewing” returns with a profile of Roland Barthes, exploring his the French semiotician and literary critic expanded the subject matter for reviewers, his influence of pop culture studies, and his usefulness in curatorial practice. Continue reading The Art of Reviewing: Roland Barthes
Wonder is a strange book. By turns sarcastic, hallucinatory, satirical, and dreamlike, it relates the misadventures of one Victor-Denijs de Rijckel, a teacher who pursues a mysterious woman only to find himself posing as an expert of Crabbe, a messianic figure associated with Nazi collaboration. Continue reading Translation Tuesdays: Wonder (1962), by Hugo Claus
I continue my essay series “On Being Human”, this week exploring the dark world of Warhammer 40K and the Space Marines. Continue reading CCLAP Fridays: On Being Human: Warhammer 40K Space Marines
Karl Wolff reviews “Isaac: a modern fable,” by Ivan G. Goldman, in which Lenny, really the Isaac from the Bible, works security for a LA movie mogul and meets Ruth, a struggling academic with an equally troubled past. In this telling, the Biblical Isaac was granted eternal life and youth. He witnesses mankind’s foibles across the centuries, so long as he doesn’t fall in love or land in jail, because then they would discover he’s not like other men. Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: Isaac: a modern fable, by Ivan Goldman
Being Human BBC Three First off, there’s the premise. A vampire and a werewolf share a flat together with the ghost of a dead woman. I admit to being skeptical when I heard about Being Human. While it sounds like a paranormal romance version of MTV’s The Real World, the BBC series Being Human presents a compelling drama about the desire to “be human.” Being Human is the brainchild of Toby Whithouse, a writer from the recently rebooted Doctor Who franchise. With this creative firepower, Being Human creates a show that possesses fantasy elements and a superior drama with complex … Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: Being Human (BBC series)
My introductory essay to my series, “On Being Human” has been posted on CCLaP. Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: On Being Human: An Introduction
I will be writing reviews and themed essays at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography. Continue reading Introducing CCLaP Fridays
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
The history of the Atlantic Monthly is also the history of America. Susan Goodman’s Republic of Words: the Atlantic Monthly and Its Writers, 1857 – 1925, traces the intellectual and editorial history of the magazine. Conceived by luminaries including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Greenleaf Whittier, and James Russell Lowell, the Atlantic began with an adamant pro-Union perspective. Lowell, the first editor, brought together numerous contributors associated with the Abolition and Transcendentalist movements. Goodman excels at bringing American history to life, charting the course of the magazine and the nation through the Civil War, … Continue reading Republic of Words: the Atlantic Monthly and Its Writers, 1857 – 1925, by Susan Goodman
The Driftless Area Review 