AltWeeklies Wire
Thomas Frank's Populist Polemic Doesn't Really Understandnew
If attacking the crimes of contemporary conservatism were an Olympic sport, Thomas Frank would be Michael Phelps.
Charleston City Paper |
Dylan Hales |
09-10-2008 |
Nonfiction
New Collection Shows Uncollected Pieces of Bukowski's 'Protean Creativity'new
Many readers only recognize the late Charles Bukowski as the Dirty Old Man — a lecherous, wasted old poet scrawling doggerel across the backs of bar napkins. The sordid details of his personal life did little to diminish such characterizations, but Bukowski was first and foremost a serious writer dedicated to his craft.
Charleston City Paper |
ERIC LIEBETRAU |
09-10-2008 |
Nonfiction
Debut Novel Depicts Chuck Klosterman's Former Small Town Lifenew
Downtown Owl is Klosterman’s first novel. Though he manages to name-drop ZZ Top, the Rolling Stones, and The Price is Right, he mostly offers a fictional supplement to his debut book, Fargo Rock City: Owl is a small North Dakota town of 800 in the early 1980s, devoid of pop culture.
Charleston City Paper |
Susan Cohen |
09-04-2008 |
Fiction
Tags: Chuck Klosterman, Downtown Owl
ZZ Packer's New Short Fiction Challenges Old Notions of Identitynew
It’s a tangle Packer addresses when she marks the border between the “Southerners” and “southerners.”
“Southerners, in full possession of that capital ‘S,’ stroll through life with an unassailable sense of right and wrong,” she writes. “Right: chicken-fried steak, Jesus, zero taxation; wrong: vegetarianism, psychiatry, Birkenstocks. The ‘southerner,’ lowercase, does not stroll so much as simper.”
Charleston City Paper |
Jon Santiago |
09-04-2008 |
Fiction
'Blue Dixie' Explodes Political Myths About the South, Perpetuates Othersnew
Conventional wisdom holds that the South is a solid GOP bloc, lost to Democrats forever, with a single stroke of LBJ's pen. But like most unchallenged "truths," this one is nothing but a media-generated myth that has had dire consequences for the democratic process.
Charleston City Paper |
Dylan Hales |
09-04-2008 |
Nonfiction
Cookie Caper: Secure Browsing Flaw Reveals a Nasty Exploitnew
I was crushed to see the Cookie Monster has been dabbling in "grey hat" SSL exploit hacking. The gleefully delusional crumb muncher is the mascot of a new cookie-snatching hack that can collect your login info on Gmail, Netflix, or even your bank. Well, he's not real, but the danger is.
Charleston City Paper |
Joshua Curry |
09-03-2008 |
Tech
'American Teen' Documents High School's 'Total Caste System' and Morenew
Documentarian Nanette Burstein spent an entire school year at the only high school in tiny Warsaw, Ind., where there is no escape from the pressure cooker of adolescence or from conservative small-town conformity.
Charleston City Paper |
Maryann Johanson |
09-03-2008 |
Reviews
Sick Story: The Next Generation of Doctors Sees Patients as 'Authors'new
Many would consider Matt Dettmer to be the picture of an ideal doctor, one who combines an aptitude for science with the humanistic insight of an artist. But in many ways Dettmer isn't unique -- he's part of a growing trend at medical universities in which courses in the humanities are playing a larger role in educating the next generation of doctors.
Charleston City Paper |
Morrow Dowdle |
09-03-2008 |
Science
That '70s Essay: Or, Where Did We Think We'd End Up After 30 Years of Denial?new
Conventional wisdom holds that if you lose something important, it's prudent to retrace your steps. And there's a bumper crop of books on the shelves right now examining exactly that: What we lost, as a nation, somewhere between the latter half of the 20th century and today.
Charleston City Paper |
Jason A. Zwiker |
09-03-2008 |
Nonfiction
Fortunately, 'Traitor' Has Don Cheadle's Moral Heftnew
Now that Traitor is done, it seems like puffing this package up with commercial viability also was a way of watering its premise down.
Charleston City Paper |
Jonathan Kiefer |
08-27-2008 |
Reviews
You'll Get Drunk Watching 'Bottle Shock'new
The story is perfect timing for our foodie-obsessed age, showing the backstory behind something we take for granted -- global wine culture -- while also delving into the finer points of winemaking, like the potential disaster of too much oxygen in producing a winning chardonnay.
Charleston City Paper |
Felicia Feaster |
08-27-2008 |
Reviews
Tags: Randall Miller, Bottle Shock
Danit Brown's Debut Chronicles the Struggle to Find One's Placenew
Osnat Greenberg grew up in Israel, in a high-rise apartment overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Her mother is Israeli, her father is American, she has eight cousins and countless second cousins, and her crazy grandmother will only eat yellow food.(The old woman dies of gas poisoning when she forgets to turn off the stove.)
Charleston City Paper |
Erica Jackson |
08-27-2008 |
Fiction
Controversy Becomes Conventional in 'Save the Males'new
Such books undoubtedly have a preconditioned choir to preach to, but offer little new to long time observers of the culture wars.
Charleston City Paper |
Dylan Hales |
08-27-2008 |
Nonfiction
A New Quarterly Helps Us Understand Who We Think We Arenew
A new quarterly hopes to provide more background about the world and less foreground. It's called Dispatches and this inaugural issue focuses on American culture, looking at it from "the inside out, the outside in," write the editors.
Charleston City Paper |
John Stoehr |
08-20-2008 |
Books
Place Value: All that separates The Rocker and is star powernew
Hamlet 2 works better than The Rocker, because it actually takes star power to play a guy who doesn't have any.
Charleston City Paper |
Scott Renshaw |
08-20-2008 |
Reviews
