AltWeeklies Wire
#GamerFatenew
How a tiny Portland company got mixed up in gaming’s biggest controversy.
Willamette Week |
Matthew Korfhage |
08-12-2015 |
Features
Driving After the Influencenew
If Washington state legalizes dope, driving there could become risky for tokers.
Willamette Week |
Matthew Korfhage |
09-10-2012 |
Policy Issues
Manhattan Goes Meta in Jonathan Lethem's 'Chronic City'new
Unlike Pynchon in The Crying of Lot 49, which this book at first resembles, Lethem keeps his readers (and his narrator) at too critical a distance, and explains far too much, and thus leaves me still waiting for that novel where Lethem finally knocks one all the way into the bleachers.
Willamette Week |
Matthew Korfhage |
10-21-2009 |
Fiction
'Flotsametrics and the Floating World' Looks at Junk and Shipping Trunksnew
Flotsametrics, written by oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer with help from journalist Eric Scigliano, is the biography of a new offshoot of science; "flotsametrics" means, essentially, the application of quantitative measurement to floating trash.
Willamette Week |
Matthew Korfhage |
08-19-2009 |
Nonfiction
Behind Every Great Man, There Are Often Several Womennew
It is Frank Lloyd Wright's tumultuous romantic life that T.C. Boyle re-animates in his novel The Women: Wright married three times, rebuilt a house for each new love and lost a mistress to murderous fire.
Willamette Week |
Matthew Korfhage |
02-18-2009 |
Fiction
'Famous Suicides' Takes on Love and Loss, in Chicago and Ancient Japannew
Mura's book takes as its epigraph Walter Benjamin's oft-repeated statement that history is a tale told by the victors, but the novel shows up this line as a lie. History belongs not to the winners but to the writers and the survivors, who never really win.
Willamette Week |
Matthew Korfhage |
10-16-2008 |
Fiction
Dirk Wittenborn Explores Psychopharmacology and Murder in 'Pharmakon'new
Wittenborn's previous novels, back in the early '80s, before his coke habit and virus-calcified heart brought him low enough to write screenplays, dealt with the safety-netted high wire of art brokers and the congenitally rich.
Willamette Week |
Matthew Korfhage |
08-13-2008 |
Fiction
Sasa Stanisic's Debut Novel Explores How Children Discuss Warnew
There is a reason, of course, why Stanisic might choose a child to give voice to atrocity: it's that the adult language of casualty counts and "shelling at Srebrenica," the newsman's reflex, no longer carries much meaning.
Willamette Week |
Matthew Korfhage |
06-18-2008 |
Fiction
A New Collection From Colm 'Shortlisted for Booker' Tóibínnew
Tóibín is best known for his novels, but while those were propelled by intensities of exploration rooted in their subjects, the author here often seems to be chasing what Yeats once said he looked for at the end of every poem: the click of a well-made box.
Willamette Week |
Matthew Korfhage |
01-09-2008 |
Nonfiction
Silja Talvi on What Prison is Really Like for Womennew
Women Behind Bars details some of the reasons behind the increase in women prisoners nationwide, and the problems it poses.
Willamette Week |
Matthew Korfhage |
11-07-2007 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
'Powers' Reveals the Truth Behind Fantasynew
Portland author Ursula Le Guin peoples her worlds with mutable characters motivated complexly, humanly, not by inner wellsprings of grab-bag good or evil.
Willamette Week |
Matthew Korfhage |
09-12-2007 |
Fiction
Why Being Dirty is a Good Thingnew
To be blunt: without dirt, we don't eat.
Willamette Week |
Matthew Korfhage |
06-27-2007 |
Nonfiction
