Lately, I’ve been craving good science fiction. This isn’t an impulse born from discontent or dissatisfaction: I’ve also been reading a lot of good science fiction. Maybe it’s due to having heard Warren Ellis speak last week; Ellis’s work often inspires me to seek out interesting speculative fiction and reminds me of the ways that our world can evoke the uncanny.
Joseph Riippi’s emotionally searing writing serves as an exhaustive overview of whatever subject he chooses to write about. In Because, that subject was himself. In the chapbook Puyallup, Washington: An Interrogation, out now on Publishing Genius, his subject is the city of the title. Throughout, Riippi delves into the city’s occasionally improbable history, along with its precarious location. I checked in with Riippi via email to learn more about the chapbook’s origins and its connection to his other recent work.
MANHATTAN – Anyone who’s recently settled into a new home will tell you that even moving from one borough to another can be daunting. So don’t be surprised if two of New York’s most beloved public figures soon ask for help lugging boxes. Thursday morning brought official word from the CBS-MLB conglomerate Base Humor Ltd: New York Yankees veteran Derek Jeter and retiring late night talk show icon David Letterman will trade jobs shortly. Mr. Letterman will take over as […]
So I went to see Noah last weekend, and left with deeply mixed feelings. On the up side, some of the images and scenes in it are among the most jarring and searing in director Darren Aronofsky’s filmography. (Yes, this includes the demonic refrigerator in Requiem for a Dream.) More problematic was the gulf between the film’s aspirations towards psychological realism in the midst of an ages-old story that, in its broad outlines, isn’t intended as a vessel for nuanced character studies. And […]
Dear Travis, I’m a small business owner hoping to inspire my staff. Any words of wisdom sure to set your generation’s nimble minds aglow? Dr. Python Felt Denton, TX Travis Robley, Wistful State University: People doubted us. Ultimately we wanted it more, but they’re so competitive that they were in it to the end. All employees want to feel that their input is heard and appreciated. Maybe organize an outdoor retreat once spring has sprung. Can’t forget to thank my […]
Well, I tried. Given that the folks at Flavorwire are prompting the reading and re-reading of a number of Shirley Jackson novels, I figured I’d delve into a few myself, beginning with The Haunting of Hill House. Said novel fell into the category of books I’d been meaning to read for ages but hadn’t; after reading the first 50-odd pages of the used copy I’d bought earlier in the month, I could see why. Jackson’s command of mood and atmosphere was […]
Last weekend, I went to a reading in celebration of Atlas Review editor/Sunday Stories alumnus Dolan Morgan’s birthday. Also there was a pile of newspapers — specifically, one called New York City Fires, in which Morgan’s poetry rests beside the artwork of Tom Oristalgio. The poems in here take a lot of found material, juxtaposing 19th-century news articles with contemporary Yelp reviews of spaces at the same location. It sounds jarring, but it’s surprisingly effective, the gulf between the hyperbole […]
My dad once pointed out an inconsequential part of Charade, the Stanley Donen film. It’s a piece of interstitial dialogue between two characters we never see. George Kennedy, with a hook for a hand, has ransacked Audrey Hepburn’s Parisian hotel room, and Cary Grant goes out the window to find him. Grant passes a neighboring room’s window, and a woman screams.