AltWeeklies Wire
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
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
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
Food Plays a Starring Role in Russian Emigre's New Short Story Collectionnew
Food, like music, can bring you back to a moment in time. For the cast of Broccoli, the smell and taste of spinach or memories of puffed rice help them relive their Russian past and hold on to a piece of their heritage.
Charleston City Paper |
Alison Sher |
08-20-2008 |
Fiction
How an Englishman Became America's Most Fearsome Book Criticnew
Normally a literary assassin, New Yorker book critic James Wood proves he's a softie at heart in his new book How Fiction Works.
Charleston City Paper |
John Freeman |
08-20-2008 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
'Stop Me If You've Heard This' Is as Valuable as You'd Thinknew
I once took a class in which the professor believed the point in studying Shakespeare's comedies was not amusement so much as profitable scholarship. The Bard's comedies, in his view, were his most serious work. To see this, though, students had to assume that funny and serious weren't at odds.
I hoped similar reasoning informed Jim Holt’s new book, Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes.
I was wrong.
Charleston City Paper |
John Stoehr |
08-13-2008 |
Nonfiction
Americans Might Find it Hard to Enjoy a Novel About Men Who Hate Womennew
This is easily one of the worst books I've ever read. And bear in mind that I've read John Grisham. I've read the Sweet Valley Middle School, High School, and University books.
Charleston City Paper |
Susan Cohen |
08-13-2008 |
Fiction
Marc Acito's New Novel is a Fun, Easy Read for One Catty Couplenew
To give it a fair shot, Attack of the Theater People, a new novel about a gay musical lover, was assigned for review to a couple of hopelessly devoted theater people who, a decade ago, shared a script on the set of their college production of Oklahoma!, swapped silly jokes about chaps, and longed for each other amid the rolling thunder of papier-mâché tumbleweeds.
Charleston City Paper |
Greg Hambrick and Shane Sears |
08-13-2008 |
Fiction
Starch in the Collar, But Not in the Spine: 'Gentleman's Guide' Lacks Ballsnew
For all its mannerly reserve, its upper-crusty starch, A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living is a thing so wispily fabricated — more eiderdown fluff than sailcloth — that any critical gust aimed at it is likely to scatter the whole works all over the floor.
Charleston City Paper |
Jon Santiago |
08-06-2008 |
Fiction
Frank Bidart's New Poems Sing Hymns to a Meaningless Universenew
His excellent new book, Watching the Spring Festival, reflects a man feeling his age, the slip of time, and the tug of oblivion. It attempts to confront the paradox of being while trying to inscribe something lasting, and also expressing unblinkingly man's cosmic dilemma -- that maybe, just maybe, there is no exit.
Charleston City Paper |
John Stoehr |
08-06-2008 |
Poetry
