Other Writing and Arts

Includes the fiction, memoir, the plastic arts, film, television, music, painting. Discussions on how they connect with poetics.

All in a Day’s Work

by Brian Chappell Fiction
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These types of genres are a narratologist’s dream, because one can spend an inordinate amount of time (even in a 190 page book like this one) teasing out the tiniest components of this unfamiliar world.

Tagged as: cyperpunk, Gary Shteyngart, Ice Trilogy, Moscow, novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, oprichniki, Putin, Russian, sci-fi, social criticism, Solzhenitsyn's, Super Sad True Love Story, Tatyana Tolstaya, Victor Erofeyev, Victor Pelevin, Vladimir Sorokin

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Lowell’s Bedlam: John McCullough

by John McCullough Poetry and Poetics
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All acts of observation are partial and reveal as much about the observer as the observed.

Tagged as: Alfred Corn, Czar Lepke, Daniel Ricken, David Manson, Dick Jaffee, Elizabeth Bishop, Elizabeth Hardwick, Hannah Mercer, Jean Stafford, Lowell’s Bedlam, Lowri Lewis, Memories of West Street and Lepke, Palm Leaves, Robert Lowell, Roger Sansom, Tennyson

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Lowell’s Bedlam: M G Stephens

by M G Stephens Poetry and Poetics
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Alfred Corn’s play gives us an inner portrait of Robert Lowell that is not found in either the biography or the poetry itself.

Tagged as: Alfred Corn, bipolar, Confessionalism, Elizabeth Bishop, Elizabeth Hardwick, John McCullough, Leonie Scott-Matthews, Lowell’s Bedlam, M G Stephens, manic depression, Pentameters Theatre, Pitney Akins, Robert Lowell, The Horseshoe

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Caleb’s Passing

by Brian Chappell Fiction
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The climax of the novel is so mawkish that its downright dismissal of the fraught implications of his “achievement” are extremely troubling.

Tagged as: Argall, assimilation, Bethia Mayfield, Caleb’s Crossing, Cheeshahteamauk, Dixon, Edward P. Jones, feminine identity, Geraldine Brooks, Harvard, Jane Eyre, Mason, Native American, Postmodernism, Pynchon, The Known World, Vollman

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The Narratology of LOST: Loops and Privileged Positions

by Brian Chappell Fiction
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LOST generates the final thrust of its narrative through even more privileged positions.

Tagged as: Cabin Fever, John Locke, loop, Lost, narrative, narratology, Peter Rabinowitz, privileged positions, simulacra, television, The End

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Stories Within Stories Within Stories Within…

by Brian Chappell Fiction
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Okay! Fine. Tea Obreht is a veritable prodigy, and The Tiger’s Wife is uncannily good. Most (no, all) reviewers, as well as the likes of Colum McCann, TC Boyle, and Ann Patchett, say no less. But this novel is not just good for a twenty-five year old. Most of us would kill to kill it like she does.

Tagged as: Ann Patchett, Colum McCann, TC Boyle, Tea Obreht, The Tiger's Wife

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On Poetry and Loss, Part 2

by Joe Weil Memoir
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I sometimes think African American “cool” and Irish humor developed out of an awareness of the truth that life is not merciful.

Tagged as: Catholic, Catholicism, grief, hernandez, Jimenez, Lorca, Loss, Me Sobra El Corazon, or Machado, Poetry and Poetics, spanish poetry

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David Foster Wallace’s Open-Ended End Game

by Brian Chappell Fiction
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Wallace over the years was most interested in narratives of suffering. Boredom (so closely linked to the problem of addiction, which he addressed in Infinite Jest) is one such type, and it takes center stage in his last book, an unfinished project published under the title The Pale King.

Tagged as: David Foster Wallace, DFW, Emily Cooke, Franzen, Infinite Jest, Kakutani, Scocca, The Broom of the System, The Pale King

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On Poetry and Loss

by Joe Weil Memoir
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The handling of such overwhelming material is first and last, a question of form. Grief, loss, outrage, must be made portable.

Tagged as: and Elizabeth Bishop, apostrophe, apostrophic address, elegy, Facebook, Fernando Pessoa, frank o'hara, grief, Loss, lullaby of the onion, miguel hernandez, One Art, Paul Celan, Roethke, status updates, The Book of Disquiet, The Day Lady Died, villanelle

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Notes on reading David Foster Wallace’s short story “John Billy”

by Daniel Silliman Fiction
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We passed the jars around and unscrewed Minogue’s bootleg lids.
We was silent at our table, expected T. Rex dead, or at least twisted, traumatized, Nunn-struck.
‘Hi,’ he said.

Tagged as: David Foster Wallace, DFW, experimental writing, Girl With Curious Hair, John Billy, short fiction

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Indie Bookstores: Kramerbooks

by Brian Chappell Fiction
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I indulge fantasies of ownership, lament the limited capacity of my wallet and shelf space to accommodate all the books I want. But I gird myself and leave with nothing, happy to have looked, touched, but saved myself again.

Tagged as: Afterwords cafe, Best American series, Big Hunt's House, indie bookstores, Kramerbooks, Paris Review, The New Yorker, zizek

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Sentimentality vs. Feeling

by Joe Weil Aesthetics
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True feeling has the force of grace; sentimentality has the stench of morals. The word “should” and “must” cling to its fat cherubic legs. Half comprised of self regard, and the other half a mixture of cliche, the sentimental is close to the feigned regard of the funeral director: appropriate, and grave, but with one eye on the itemized bill.

Tagged as: Chekov, feeling, Lipa, Madame Bovary, Nabokov, Russian Literature, sentimentality, The Gully, The Ravine, The Sound of Music, Tolstoy

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