1. ONE OF THE CHICKEN-OR-egg challenges of modern media (social and traditional) is their pervasive sense of nonlinear immediacy, by which I mean the everything-at-once flattening of the artistic landscape.
Tag: reviews
Critiques answer the question, “Is it art?” Reviews answer, “Is it good?”
Of Heroes, Waterbeds, and After-Midnight Television
THERE IS A MOVIE THAT follows the struggles inherent in the so-called Hero’s Journey: a high-born child is raised in secret by commoners, and eventually groomed by a wise elder to overcome obstacles and fulfill his destiny by taking his…
Fandom as Cargo Cult
IF WE BUILD IT, THEY will come — again. First, you need to know what a “cargo cult” is: a folk religion among some groups of Melanesian Islanders who believed that they could attract cargo-carrying airplanes by engaging in sympathetic…
Don’t let the plot get in the way of the story.”
— Anon.
First Graf: Torah
(BE HONEST — YOU MUST HAVE known I’d get around to this one eventually, right?) I make no rigid claims of authenticity, accuracy, or authorship for this work. As far as I’m concerned, this is “simply” a collection of ancient…
First Graf: The Dharma Bums
IN MANY WAYS, THIS 1958 book is better than the earlier On the Road. Kerouac’s signature stream-of-consciousness narrative style is more flowy, and the novel’s lionized centerperson (poet Gary Snyder, or “Japhy Ryder” as tDB calls him) a more noble…
First Graf (well, page): Harold and the Purple Crayon
THE FIRST BOOK I EVER read from cover to cover was Crockett Johnson’s 1955 work, Harold and the Purple Crayon. If you’re not familiar with it, it goes like this: A small boy in one-piece pajamas draws with, well, purple…
Metaphoraging Roundup: 2019
AND SO THE CIRCLE TURNS again, one more orbit of the Earth ’round the Sun; meaning it’s time for the media’s year-end lookbacks — a conceit from which The Metaphorager is not immune. As of this writing (two weeks ago),…
First Graf: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
ACTUALLY, SINCE T.A.o.S.H. IS THE first published collection of all Sherlock Holmes stories, here is (also) the First Graf of “A Scandal In Bohemia,” being the first of the tales in said collection. It’s unfortunate that Sherlock Holmes has become…
Why I Hate Jay Michaelson
IT’S THAT ANYTHING I CAN do, he can do better. It’s his unaffected, artless prose. It’s his vast non-dualist scholarship and experience. It’s his light touch. It’s his unpretentiousness. It’s that he neither talks down to or over the heads…
5 Thoughts: Informed Appreciation
1. IT’S ONE THING TO LIKE something. It’s something quite else to know why you like it — and how it came to be. 2. “Informed appreciation” is the key to that knowing. Only when you can comprehend the effort,…
“It’s Just That…”
THERE’S A THING — WELL, LET’S call it a verbal placeholder-prefix — used by writers of audiovisual entertainments when they want a character to segue away from or into an awkward conversation. My friends, meet: “It’s just that…” You’ve heard…