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Elmore Leonard, Knight Errantry, and the Super Bowl
Saturday February 16, 2008
Robert Benchley once said that there are two kind of people in the world: Those who divide the world in two kinds of people, and those who don’t. I’m more prone to trilogies myself. The world is a set of triangles; not railroad tracks. Therefore, I start with Super Bowl XLII.
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Turning Eli Stones into Bread
Friday February 15, 2008
Kudos to ABC for standing by its pilot episode of Eli Stone, in which a young defense attorney, suddenly prone to visions of George Michael singing “Faith” in his home and workplace, ends up representing the plaintiff, a mother who claims the mercury-based preservative in a vaccine caused autism in her son.
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Priest Shortage
Thursday February 14, 2008
I recently reread one of my mother’s books—Mr. Blue, by Myles Connolly, which was first published in 1928. It is a tale of a latter day St. Francis, Mr. Blue, who introduces the narrator to the joy of the Divine. Mr. Blue lives on rooftops and flies kites. On this reading, I found him fey, visionary and occasionally annoying.
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John Dillenberger, RIP
Wednesday February 13, 2008
When I first contacted John Dillenberger I was not quite thirty years old and he was not quite seventy. He was a former seminary president and distinguished theologian, with nearly a dozen books to his credit. I was...a guy who wanted to start a journal.
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Not Going Gentle: Another Look at "There Will Be Blood"
Tuesday February 12, 2008
After reading reviews for Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, I became frustrated. The consensus about its central character, Daniel Plainview, was that he was “a great oversize monster who hates all men including therefore himself” (Roger Ebert). My problem? Watching the film, I had related to Daniel.
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Current Issue
Issue 57
The sculpture of Richard Serra, Franz Wright on the Gospels, interview with Ron Hansen, fiction by Pinckney Benedict
Good Letters: The Image Blog
