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Film Critic Performs Live In Concert Tomorrow Night
There is nothing beautiful about University City, less a suburb than a purgatory with cul-de-sacs and houses designed by architects who forget that families actually have to live in thosse poster board shoe boxes. A suitable town for a film critic to play music --I play harmonica solos at bus stops to this day, 46 years after I started with the instrument, and I swear the sheer banality of the venue inspires me to play my best, always. Nothing I've done away from the bus stop, in the studio, in bands, in general, comes near the beauty I create when confronted with a long wait for the 30 to Old Town. Play hard and well, brother.— August 5, 2012 3:19 p.m.
David Elliott’s Declaration of Pleasure
The Reader has the extraordinary good fortune to lose one unique film critic , armed with style, knowledge and sufficient wit, with another critic with equal, yet distinct attributes. Duncan Shepherd has made his mark , I am sorry to see him leave the paper, but I am glad that David Eliot will again have a venue from which to continue his fine history of movie critique. A smart choice.— November 19, 2010 2:01 p.m.
So Long
I am sorry to see you leave the pages of the Reader, web or otherwise. You've been one of very few to not be swayed to the chorus of fluctuating fashion. Although I have to say that I disagreed with your judgements more than half the time, I respected and look forward to your knowledge, your wit and the elegance of your prose. It was a good bet that if I wanted to defend a film you found wanting, I would have to "up my game". You have my gratitude that you kept up the good fight as long as you had; I hope someday soon I might again be able to read you again, when it's on your times, about what you find engaging.— November 10, 2010 3:08 p.m.
Mavis Staples and Charlie Musselwhite Go Belly Up
It's gratifying to see an appreciation of Mavis Staples in the Reader, however brief it was. Even with length limitations, I would have thought William Crain could have managed some qualifying words for Staples' co-headliner, Charlie Musselwhite. Musselwhite is of that generation of young , white blues fans who took to playing the music they loved; in doing so they introduced the music to a broader audience and added their distinct signatures to the art. Musselwhite, it needs to be emphasized, isn't a mere arhivalist; along with Paul Butterfield and Corky Siegal, Musselwhite advanced the vocabulary of blues harmonica. The man is a Modern Master on the instrument, an influence on countless other harmonica players; his ability is without peer.— November 3, 2010 2:24 p.m.
Norman Mailer Could Make a Phone Book Fascinating
Well, no.My point was why Buckley didn't join the collective condemnation of Mailer and his championing of Jack Henry Abbott. How I cited the two incidents were appropriately succinct to the particular subject. Mailer's problematic relationship with Gore Vidal is another matter altogether and has no relation to what I was talking about. Remember, I was commenting on John Brizzolara's use of the Mailer quote "culture is worth a little risk", which though it offered a nice way to end an interesting column, was itself removed from it's context. That context was the aftermath of the murder Abbott committed after his release from prison. Vidal, to my knowledge, never advocated for a convict's release; hence, his name never arose in my first post. Why you brought him up is puzzling.— September 18, 2010 6:26 a.m.
Norman Mailer Could Make a Phone Book Fascinating
Choppy? Compressed is more like it;anyone wishing to read about Buckley and Smith in more depth can use Google easily enough. I "Ideologically convenient"? That's a stretch. I merely speculated as to why Buckley was silent during the Mailer/Abbott fiasco. While every cultural conservative had a field day excoriating Mailer for his romanticist obsession with criminality and how his applied notion resulted in the death of an innocent man, Buckley had shared with him the erring notion that literary talent can transform odious individuals into decent, honorable men. Like Mailer, Buckley learned tragically that the benefits of art on human behavior only go so far. Hence, he chose to remain mute rather than run his mouth. Buckley was easily one of the few intellectually honest conservatives at the time, and I respect him for not expressing copious amounts of strained outrage. I am well aware of what Buckley thought of Mailer, and vice versa, as I've been reading both of them for forty years.— September 17, 2010 8:40 p.m.
Norman Mailer Could Make a Phone Book Fascinating
For anyone who's interested, here's a link to my review of "The Castle in the Forest". http://ted-burke.blogspot.com/2007/01/mailers-mas…— September 17, 2010 3:36 p.m.
Norman Mailer Could Make a Phone Book Fascinating
Culture may well be worth a little risk, but it's an unfortunate remark considering that it was Mailer's oft-quoted response to the news that the convict he helped free from prison, Jack Henry Abbott, had been arrested for murdering a waiter. Agile as he was with pencil in hand, he was often maladroit when pressed with evidence that his assumptions about the spiritual essence of violence and the power of writing to redeem and reform a sinner had proved disastrous in practice. There was a substantial uproar from Mailer's critics condemning him for testing his notions with people's lives at stake, but remarkably absent from the irate chorus was conservative gadfly William F.Buckley. A consistent advocate of cultural values, Buckley had his own folly with being a convicted killer's advocate with Edgar Lee Smith. Buckley worked to get Smith freed from prison under the belief that he was innocent of the murder charge he'd been convicted of. Smith was consequently released, only to admit sometime later that he was, after all, guilty . The good conservative remained silent during Mailer's travails. Mailer's fiction, I think, has been given a tragic short -shrift even among his advocates, and it occurs to me that some of those works--An American Dream, Why are We in Vietnam?, Harlot's Ghost--will have posthumous reappraisals and will come to be regarded as some of the most important American novels written in the 20th Century. Mailer's elephantine persona no longer obscures his many good graces as a writer.— September 17, 2010 7:06 a.m.
How Did You Quit Smoking?
Calm down, friend. It's gonna be alright...— September 11, 2010 7:30 a.m.
How Did You Quit Smoking?
One of the salient humbling experiences I have in my life is coming across a sample of something I wrote several decades earlier; callow voice, strained cadence, absurdly broad generalizations, a nervous pretentiousness shivering behind the cardboard bravado. I remember the concert, the bands, and I remember when I thought these things mattered. It can be said, I think, that my writing has tightened up, my pretensions are reined in,and that my tastes have broadened considerably. It is instructive, though, to take be reminded how parochial I was, and remain capable of being.— September 10, 2010 8:54 p.m.