Samuel Beckett says: Wherever nauseated time has dropped a nice fat turd you will find our patriots, sniffing it up on all fours, their faces on fire. Glenn Greenwald says it like so: What's most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. Government's new power to assassinate their fellow citizens -- [in this instance, Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Kahn] -- far from any battlefield, literally without a shred of due process from the U.S. Government. … [Read more...]
Archives for September 2011
A Maniac and His Muse
Susan Fleet -- trumpet player and feminist music historian -- set her first crime thriller, Absolution, in pre-Katrina New Orleans, where homicide detective Frank Renzi takes on a serial killer who preys on women. Fleet's new killer thriller, Diva, is subtitled "a novel of psychological suspense." That's an understatement. Renzi is back, now in post-Katrina New Orleans, pitted this time against a lethal stalker whose prey is a beautiful classical musician on the cusp of stardom. The psycho in Diva (paperback, Kindle, Nook) is not only a … [Read more...]
Not James Cagney
If you guessed Billie Whitelaw doing Samuel Beckett's "Not I," you get a Google star. Here's the complete version at UbuWeb (beginning at 2:51 on the counter), preceded by a short interview with Whitelaw. … [Read more...]
What a Day for the Obits
Today's three-fer . . . 1) Richard Hamilton, British Painter and a Creator of Pop Art, Dies at 89 2) Carl Oglesby, Antiwar Leader in 1960s, Dies at 76 3) John Calley, Hollywood Chief, Dies at 81 Taking the long view . . . Doncha just luuhv zat akzent? Postscript: Arman's epitaph -- Enfin Seul! -- puts it best. Well, almost. There's no topping Jack MacGowran reading from Beckett's Malone Dies: I shall soon be quite dead at last in spite of all. … [Read more...]
LES Jews
It's a different kind of memorial. … [Read more...]
Empty Ceremonies: Grandees to Gather for 9/11
Jimmy Breslin was right. It's a lousy idea to turn the victims of 9/11 into martyrs and just as lousy to turn Ground Zero into a glorified cemetery. It was wrong in 2003, when he railed against both ideas in his newspaper column; and it is now, when the 10th anniversary of 9/11 is about to be commemorated exploited in a solemn fit of national mourning. It's not that Breslin failed to sympathize with the families of those who died in the attack, as I've written before. It's that many more who have died under ordinary circumstances, caused not … [Read more...]