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In Which From Time To Time We Come Around
Thirteen Was A Very Bad Year by LAUREN BANS Oh man, do you remember the pre-Napster-nabbing days of youth, when buying music was still an active verb that entailed getting your family to drive you 15...
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In Which We Enunciate Our Presence Here
Dungeon Bunnies by DANIEL D'ADDARIO Our Idiot Brother dir Jesse Peretz 90 minutes Narratives about squabbling, intellectual siblings and the Judd Apatow crew of ageless male comedians both have their...
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In Which Rodin Distinguishes Himself From Ordinary Things
The Birdlike Ones by ISABELLA YEAGER Deeply affected by the loss of her infant daughter, René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke’s mother Phia dealt with parts of her grief by dressing her young...
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In Which We Try To Discern What Condition Our Condition Is In
Not Ungrateful by LEON DISCHE BECKER "She won't make it," Ahmed Abdullah, an elderly bodega cashier, told me. "No way. They never do." He made Hurricane Irene sound like a clueless Southern lounge...
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In Which Just Saying It Could Even Make It Happen
Almost Divine by DURGA CHEW-BOSE Alice in the Cities dir. Wim Wenders 110 minutes Philip Winter is stricken with writer's block. Having missed his magazine deadline, he sells his car to a garage in...
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In Which These Young People Are More Than Usually Self-Regarding
The Feminist Who Wasn't by ALEX CARNEVALE Liberal Parents, Radical Children by Midge Decter 248 pp, 1975 I remember the first time I saw Midge Decter. It was on C-Span. Midge was promoting her memoir...
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In Which We Watch Our Empty Silhouette
The Waves on the Sea by EMMA KEMPSELL I found an old home video recently. It was of my father’s 40th birthday party, which was also his last birthday. It was the biggest party my parents ever held and...
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In Which We Find Ourselves Pet Detectives No More
Hazy Days by DICK CHENEY Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan Condi Rice recently lashed out at me because I suggested in these memoirs that she cried in my office. And so what if she did, exactly?...
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In Which John Cassavetes Keeps A Part Of Himself Alive
The Defenseless Thing John Cassavetes' 1974 production of A Woman Under the Influence represented the pinnacle of his artistic collaboration with Gena Rowlands. He wrote her one of the most complex...
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In Which We Destroy The Myth Of Living Abroad
Live Tigers by DAYNA EVANS We were trying to find a place called Fairy Hill, but no one knew where it was. I bought six hangers from a man on the street, who was standing next to several other men...
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In Which We Choose Our Proteges Ever So Wisely
The Perfect Driving Disposition This is the third and final entry in a series about the letters of Denise Levertov and Williams Carlos Williams. You can read the first part here and the second part...
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In Which We Contemplate Hierarchies In The Mid 90s
Popular Fantasies by LEON DISCHE BECKER One of the primary benefits of growing up a full-time — though, at times, rebellious — apparatchik of my sister, was that she tried to steer me clear of all the...
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In Which What Made It Special Made It Dangerous
Beauty by DURGA CHEW-BOSE In a 1972 episode of The Mike Douglas Show, co-hosted by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Barbara Loden is introduced by her hosts as "a very lovely lady," as "married to a very...
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In Which The World Is Burning Somewhere Else
Doing This Again by BARBARA GALLETLY As a little one I loved school. It was normal. It always helps to be good at it and to have a nice teacher. My parents went away every day, and when they traveled...
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In Which It Is Neither The Plane Nor The Pilot
Red Sails by ALEX CARNEVALE He went from being cocaine-ravaged thin, with this totally gaunt, pallid face, to this new healthy look — blond hair, tanned looking, very exuberant. — Simon Reynolds...
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In Which Yvonne Rainer Envied No One
Yvonne's Corridor Out of the world of dance came Yvonne Rainer like a rocket. From 1971 to 1996 she would make only seven films, all of which operated by discarding old cinematic principles and...
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In Which You May Think Of Wittgenstein What You Like
Infinite Possibility The short correspondence of Ludwig Wittgenstein retains a certain zest. Ludwig was most certainly gay, most definitely eccentric, and intellectually demanding beyond all measure....
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In Which We Discard A Heart-Shaped Box
Description of Kurt Cobain by ELLEN COPPERFIELD At the age of eleven, Kurt Cobain was the subject of a description to be published in his school's newspaper, the Puppy Press, under the headline,...
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In Which Vladimir Nabokov Says It All
The Life We've Been Living The correspondence of Vladimir Nabokov and the critic Edmund Wilson had sputtered over the latter's inability to appreciate some of Nabokov's work. But Edmund still wanted...
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In Which Cameron Crowe Knew How To Pick Them
Talk About Things That Get Me Excited by ALEX CARNEVALE Singles dir. Cameron Crowe 99 minutes Kyra Sedgwick works for the vaguely named "Seattle Environmental Group", which probably amounts to a...
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