I was looking over the screenplay of Brokeback Mountain the other day, which was adapted by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana from E. Annie Proulx’s shattering short story, and I got to thinking what an overlooked writer McMurtry has been. Oh yes, he’s won the Pulitzer, and made writing about Texas and the modern west […]
First of all, for those of you not in the know, Christopher and His Kind was a book written in 1976 by Christopher Isherwood. Isherwood wrote a number of books, including A Single Man, Mr. Norris Changes Trains, but his most famous one was Goodbye to Berlin. This became, after several adaptations, the play and […]
I don’t know that I can speak objectively about reading The Raven Boys, or its follow up The Dream Thieves. Since long commutes are a fact of life in southern california, and reading while driving a car tends to end badly, I listened to both on audiobooks. And they enraptured me. I fell deeply into […]
One really has to hand it to Rupert Everett. Once touted as the next great British leading man, he came out of the closet and summarily watched a once very promising film career go down, if not in a torrent of flames, then at the very least, in a rank smouldering mess that resembled nothing […]
Young Man to Middle Aged Man: “You had content but no force.” Middle Aged Man to Young Man: “You had force but no content.” – the original epigraph to Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev’s novel of poetic realism is seen today as a recognized masterpiece in its theme of clashing generations. Unlike many masterpieces of […]
A few weeks ago when I was browsing through new releases online, one caught my eye, Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. The book’s description alone made me run to my bookstore the next day and pick it up because I was that college freshman with Harry Potter posters on her dorm room wall (looks around sheepishly). […]
This autobiographical novel by Joyce Rebeta-Burditt was a national bestseller when it was first published back in 1976. Immediately referred to as a female One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, it became instantly popular but, unlike Ken Kesey’s book, it did not become an enduring classic. This is odd to understand, because re-reading it after […]
Ed Kennedy has literally nothing going for him. He is 19, drives a taxi cab, lives in a ramshackle house with his dog the Doorman, and is hopelessly in love with his best friend, Audrey. In other words, he has no plans for his future. His life has been nothing but ordinary and he hasn’t […]