Lincoln’s Last Walk
The only proper end, the one that will carry you out into the world, is the one that comes right where it’s needed — it might be a beat sooner than you’d prefer and certainly sooner than expected. Good endings create art that topples expectations. When they drag on they unravel, untether everything the film has worked […]
Dances with Concepts: a Conversation with Sam Lipsyte [Part 2 of 2]
[Continued from Part 1] In this context, is serious fiction relevant? What I think a lot of people find distressing is not even what is lionized in our culture, but how few books get to really be presented to the public. It’s not that it’s this book, it’s that this is the only book that is important this season, because […]
Dances with Concepts: a Conversation with Sam Lipsyte [Part 1 of 2]
You get stories that weave in and out of each other and contradict each other and create new narratives. That’s more exciting to me than one long story with a message of, say, capitalism is bad or war is deplorable. We know that — let’s dance with those concepts and see what else happens. I’ll […]
First Encounters: David Fincher
David Fincher centers me. Like Radiohead says, “everything in its right place.” I couldn’t have told you this a week or so ago, but an artist I’m interviewing put it just so. Putting it in my own words does nothing to diminish or unsettle its power. “I have a philosophy about the two extremes of […]
