Author: J T. Ramsay

From Dave Kehr’s New York Times review: Is “Mr. Arkadin” a bril­liant piece of pre­post­mod­ernist “appro­pri­a­tion,” recy­cling past achieve­ments into a Welle­sian meta-movie? Or is it just a mess, reflect­ing the dif­fi­cul­ty Welles was expe­ri­enc­ing as he tried to restart his failed Amer­i­can career in Europe? Isn’t the word for pre­post­mod­ernist just mod­ernist?

In case you did­n’t know, I’ve been select­ed for Philebri­ty Fit Club thus can­celling my mem­ber­ship to The Seden­tary Life Affil­i­ates, a fra­ter­ni­ty to which I’d clung lo these six years, trans­fer­ring mem­ber­ship from New York to Pennsport. So as not to bog down Black­mail Is My Life with a dai­ly account­ing of food­stuffs, run­ning,…

From New York Times: “I thought he han­dled his assign­ment with class, integri­ty,” the pres­i­dent said. “It’s going to be hard to replace Scott, but nev­er­the­less he made the deci­sion and I accept­ed it. One of these days, he and I are going to be rock­ing in chairs in Texas and talk­ing about the good old days.”…

The Flam­ing Lips — At War with the Mystics The Flam­ing Lips’ At War with the Mys­tics tells a pes­simistic polit­i­cal sto­ry. Begin­ning with the unfor­tu­nate­ly titled “Yeah Yeah Yeah Song”, they ques­tion human nature and assume the worst: that baser ele­ments win out in the sec­u­lar cos­mol­o­gy and that our impuls­es are inher­ent­ly self-inter­est­ed,…

Thus “style” was born: this was Flaubert’s sec­ond gift to nov­el­ists, and one they are as like­ly to curse him for as to thank him. Of course, writ­ers before Flaubert had ago­nized about style: don’t we feel that Jane Austen was a ruth­less cen­sor of super­fluity? But no nov­el­ist ago­nized as much or as pub­licly,…