A Cultural History of the Chinese Language by Sharron Gu attempts to provide a means for non-specialists to approach Chinese, not from the technical and scientific discipline of linguistics, but from the discipline of literary history. Continue reading A Cultural History of the Chinese Language, by Sharron Gu
The Driftless Area Review interviews Isaac Goldman, author of “Isaac: a modern fable,” to discuss folklore, favorite writers, boxing, and why you shouldn’t try to sell the Tonight Show a joke. Continue reading An Interview with 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
New York Review Books publishes a forgotten classic of genre mashups and social satire. Continue reading The Letter Killers Club, by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovksy
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
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
Genealogy Anselm Berrigan comes from an esteemed family. The son of poet Ted Berrigan and poet Alice Notley, his brother is the poet and songwriter Edmund Berrigan. Anselm’s wife Karen Weiser also works as a poet. Notes from Irrelevance shows that Anselm didn’t get his book deal by trading on his father’s name. (America, despite its populist and egalitarian posturing, has a yen for dynasties and nepotism. See: the Presidency, Ford Motor Company, etc.) Content Notes from Irrelevance could easily bear the subtitle, “One man’s search for meaning in the second decade of the 21st century.” Throughout the short … Continue reading Notes from Irrelevance, by Anselm Berrigan
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
The Driftless Area Review 