This last week, I rewatched The Amazing Spider-Man (2012). I’ve heard it said that Toby Mcguire understood Peter Parker but not Spider-Man, but Andrew Garfield understood Spider-Man but not Peter Parker. Tom Hollands understands both Spider-Man and Peter Parker. That’s why he’s the best actor to play the character we’ve seen. But there’s something...
On December 26, 1811, the Richmond Theatre in Richmond, Virginia burned down. Since seventy-two people died, it was the worst disaster to date in American history. To commemorate it, they built the Monumental Church on its site. This Episcopal church still stands today. The location must’ve been important to Edgar Allan Poe. His mother’s...
I finished reading A Storm of Swords last night. It’s the third novel in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. I keep saying that I’m never going to catch-up with the rest of the world in Game of Thrones, because Martin writes these novels faster than I read them...
I should call this Sniffles Sunday. On Thursday, I became sick with a spring bug. I took Thursday and Friday off from work, and I spent most of my time since Thursday in bed. That explains–but no excuses–why I neglected to post my review of “The Common Day” yesterday, as intended and promised. I...
Memories of My Melancholy Whores begins with its protagonist and narrator declaring the objectionable goal of wanting to have sex with a teenaged virgin. It’s the gift he wants to give himself for his ninetieth birthday. He contacted the madame at the local brothel, who finds a fourteen-year-old girl to fulfill his needs. Since...
My Nook crashed earlier this month. For that reason, as well as others, I’m mad at Barnes and Noble right now. Since they have been my favorite bookstore for decades, I’m hoping they can pull themselves out of this rut and restore the solid reputation they have with me. Since they’re a brick-and-mortar bookstore...
Where do you begin with a writer like Larry McMurtry? His name, I fear, is not a household name, but his work–from The Last Picture Show (1966) to Lonesome Dove (1985) to the movie Brokeback Mountain (2005)–is well-known. When I was a young man, loving literature and always craving new writers, I would go...
At my first creative writing class, the grad student who taught it asked how many of us write fiction. All hands went up. How many of you consider yourself fiction writers? A few hands dropped, but most stayed up. How many write poetry? Most of us kept their hands up. How many of you...
When literary scholars think of Southern Writers, they tend to first think of William Faulkner. Though Southern Literature had been around since Colonial times, in the post-Civil War era, Faulkner gave it new life and vitality. He opened doors for other Southern Writers, like Katherine Anne Porter, Thomas Wolfe, and Robert Penn Warren. Southern...
“Poetry,” one of my literature professors had said long ago in class, “is about mixed emotions.” She was talking about Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz,” a short poem loaded with both positive and negative imagery and invoking both happy and frightening emotions. But she could’ve been talking about any great poem, and not just...
