Archive | August 2009
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To Live or Perish Forever – Stunt Journalism and Reporting – A Review
The term stunt journalism first came into usage after 1887 when Nellie Bly wrote Ten Days in a Madhouse where she had impersonated a mad woman to get a patient’s view of a madhouse. The stunt made her famous and did bring the story to a public that didn’t know how bad the madhouses were. [...]
‘The Informers’ by Juan Gabriel Vásquez reviewed at the Los Angles Times
The Los Angles Times has a good review of The Informers by Juan Gabriel Vásquez. I’ve seen other reviews of the book (if I was a better blogger I would actually link to it) and they were all good. The book is an interesting mix of history and story telling that ranges over the last [...]
The Unknown Soldier from DC Comics
I used to read DC war comics when I was younger, finding even then the superhero comics less than interesting. Which is not to say that if drug my copies of those comics out of the closet I might not find them insipid. Yet there was a reality to them that was more than real, [...]
Mexican Novelest Mario Bellatin Profiled in the New York Times
The New York times has a moderately sized profile of Mexican novelist Mario Bellatin. It is a little hard to say if I want to read his work, but it looks like he may becoming a little more known. In one index of his growing international reputation, Mr. Bellatin recently signed a multibook deal with [...]
Sons of Mahfouz – An Egyptian Novelist After Mahfouz
Al Ahram weekly (via Literary Salon) has a good article about the youngish (b. 1967) Novelist Ibrahim Farghali and the evolution of post Mahfouz writing. I’m not sure if I agree with the author of the article’s implicit idea that after realism comes magical realism: [...] Yet from a history-of-literature point of view, Abnaa Al-Gabalwi [...]
Julie and Julia – Hagiography Sauteed in Butter – A Review
I love to eat and to cook. I’ve got chef skills with the knife, can cut a mound of paper thin onion slices quickly, and think it is fun to spend a half hour sieving a sauce so that it is ever so smooth. So Julie and Julia was fun, if for no other reason [...]
New Book – Off the Wall: Political Posters of the Lebanese Civil War
The NY Times has a brief review of a new book of posters from the Lebanese Civil War. It sounds fascinating, although there are not too many photos on the web for a preview, just the one cover shot below. The article itself might be of interest if you are interested in alternative comics such [...]
$9.99 – A Review of Animated Etgar Keret
At first it would seem difficult to make a film from the stories of Etgar Keret or at least difficult to make a film with a narrative thread that spanned the film and was not a series of little vignettes. Keret is known for ultra short stories, most under 3000 words, and they are usually [...]
Borges’ Library Of Babel
Grant Munroe at Rumpus (via Literary Salon) has an article, Searching the Library of Babel, that is recursively Borgesien in its search for a still as not yet translated work of Borges, the 33 volume The Library of Babel. It is an interesting collection, if for nothing else to see what Borges considered worth reading, [...]
Amos Kenan, Israeli Writer Has Passed Away
I don’t know much about Amos Kenan, just what the NY Times obit says, and I have a feeling I won’t read him because I don’t have the time, but the obituary is worth the read just to get the sense of the broadness of writing in Israel. The only book that seems to be [...]
Season of Migration to the North and Tayeb Salih Reviewed in Harpers
There is an excellent review of Season of Migration to the North by Robyn Creswell in Harpers (via Powell’s). The review goes beyond the typical East-West polemic that usually comes out in reviews (something I noted in my own review). Many critics have noted that Season of Migration to the North is in some sense [...]
