I’ve been trying to up my reading game, and recently finished reading my eighth and ninth novels of the year, which averages out to one novel every ten days. Not that anyone is counting. This reading pace feels right to me, neither rushed nor leisurely, but instead allowing me to engage in careful, focused reading every day. Blue Ruin, by Hari Kunzru, was recommended by a friend. It begins in the...
The year is 1906. The location is the priory of the Sisters of the Crucifixion in upstate New York. Mariette Baptiste is a beautiful 17-year-old postulant when she joins the order, against the wishes of her father. She quickly becomes a favorite of the other sisters until she begins to exhibit signs of the stigmata — bleeding from locations of Christ’s wounds when he was nailed to the cross.Some...
It is not without trepidation that I make an annual pilgrimage to my local Spectrum Theater to see the Oscar-Nominated Short Films—Live Action. What gives me pause is that in recent years, despite the films originating from countries around the world, most of them have been heavy on the tragedy: the boy who drowns in quicksand, the young woman sold into sexual slavery, the family double-crossed...
I’m reading this novel, Light Years, by James Salter, a novelist known for his succinct, luminous prose and his explorations of desire and ambition. He wrote with the precision of Hemingway and the emotional acuity of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and he carved out a space for his work in twentieth-century literature. Light Years, one of his critically acclaimed works, traces the slow dissolution of a...
Do you ever read a book, or see a movie, or attend a performance, and walk out thinking, “Yeah, that was pretty good.” But then over the next hours and days you keep thinking about it, and the more you think about it, the more you appreciate what you experienced. It’s almost better afterwards, in your memory, than it was in real time. Send Help was that movie for me. Since the sad demise of the...
I’d never read the old copy of Wuthering Heights on our bookshelf, with the cover frayed and soft at the edges and the pages thin as tissue. But when I heard the movie was coming out I decided to give this novel a read. Published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is an early example of a Gothic novel from the Victorian period. Unlike its contemporary Jane...
The hottest actor these days seems to be Timothee Chalamet, and his latest film is the frenetic Marty Supreme. The film follows swaggering, twenty-something, table-tennis hustler Marty Mauser, a prodigy from New York’s streets who is attempting to raise enough money to travel to Japan to compete in a world championship tournament. Chalamet is at his best in a role that showcases his talent and...
I didn’t play “Cowboys and Indians” as a kid. I never had a cowboy hat or cowboy boots. I grew up in a city, not the countryside. Other than a few Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns—“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” “High Plains Drifter”—I paid little attention to the genre. So when Larry McMurtry won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for his epic western novel “Lonesome Dove,” I barely noticed. At the...
Yes, I went to the Spectrum Theater to see “Train Dreams” the other night, but I attended with a heavy heart: The Delmar Dad’s Movie Club lasted exactly one year, and then, without warning, blew up spectacularly. First, Jimmy broke up with us via text: “We did a year and it was good. But I’m not into continuing.” Paul and I were shocked, I tell you, although maybe we shouldn’t have...
We actually did it: The Delmar Dads three-person movie group attended a film for 12 consecutive months to support the independent Spectrum Theater. It wasn’t all smooth sailing. On two occasions, one of us (me) had to seek special dispensation from club officers to move the night from the second Wednesday of the month to the second Tuesday. In addition, one of us (not me), didn’t attend the July...
The Movie Club went throwback this month and we saw Jaws, the iconic thriller/suspense blockbuster celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. I’m extremely familiar with Jaws. I happen to live with someone who has said Jaws is her favorite movie, and she went to see it numerous times in the summer of 1975 when it premiered. Since then, we’ve seen the film, or parts of it, many times. So there...
After a blip last month in which one of us missed, the Delmar Dads Movie Club was back last night with a full roster of our three founding members. It was Paul’s turn to choose, and this guy is on a winning streak. We saw Weapons, the kind of horror/mystery/thriller type film I would never choose, but am glad that he did. Weapons has one of those far-out concepts: what happens to a community when...
It’s not often I finish a book and experience a welling of tears and realize I’ve just read a great work of American literature. But John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath just did it to me. I think I read the novel in high school, although I remember nothing of it. I came into it this time fresh and without opinion. And the Joad family and their journey of survival blew me away. Tenant farmers in...
Anyone who reads this blog knows that I’m a fan of multilinear films and novels, which are constructed around multiple protagonists with intersecting storylines and driven by a central theme. So when Owen told me he watched the film Crash (2004), I was keenly interested in his reaction. As a side note, I included Crash with the word ‘Sorry’ in parentheses, on my “List of Must-See Movies.” I...
A subset of the Delmar Dads Movie Club went to the Spectrum Theater last night and saw “Friendship,” a cringey black comedy starring the actor and comedian Tim Robinson, whom I’d never heard of, but apparently is popular. It was my turn to choose what film we’d see on the second Wednesday of this month, and darn if the pickings weren’t slim. I almost chose “F1” but was warned by someone trusted...
