Then the ragged crowd pressed forward, in spite of the threat of the guns. They were ordered back. The tide of men came forward, silently, heavily, big hands by their knees. The gun shots rang out again. The men kept on coming. Heavily. Stepping over bodies soaked in blood. A third time the guns fired. At that moment out of the crowd, amid the dead bodies of men, pregnant women, the dust, blood, sun and gunfire, came the beautiful long-haired... Read more
Via Prince of Petworth: Hi all- I live at this house and it’s my free library. We’re a house of returning citizens (ex-offenders) and we made this library (and do other things) to be a positive force in our neighborhood. The artist, a friend of ours, created a painting scheme that looks like row houses that are the covers of DC-based books. We also put up the Free Minds logo (a book club that works with kids who via Title... Read more
at the University Bookman: Eve Tushnet I hope to spend this summer soaking up the sun with Los Bros. Hernandez’s epic comic book series “Love and Rockets.” The comics follow a group of knockabout, hard-living characters from punk LA (Jaime Hernandez’s “Hoppers 13” stories) and a slightly surreal South American village (Gilbert Hernandez’s “Palomar”). These are genre-crossing tales of love, loss, slowly encroaching adulthood, and sci-fi adventure; there are ghosts and witches, betrayal and camaraderie, superheroes, and luchadoras. Jaime’s art... Read more
written by a Baltimorean and a fan of the show: The closest the show gets to presenting an autonomous Black solution to Black problems is Cutty’s boxing gym, and the fate of the young people who cycle through there frame the effort largely as a failure. more (via Loftus)–among other things, looks at how Simon’s choice of genre (tragedy of institutions) locked him into a narrative where the important forces work on black communities from the outside. I agree w/Loftus... Read more
There were times when it felt as though my children were annihilating me. Finally I came to the thought, All right, then, annihilate me; that other self was a fiction anyhow. And then I could breathe. I could investigate the pauses. I found that life intruding on writing was, in fact, life. And that, tempting as it may be for a writer who is also a parent, one must not think of life as an intrusion. At the end of... Read more
PEG says some stuff I can really relate to: “Where would we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Peter’s words here are the words of a desperate lover, which is definitely what he was. Peter almost never understood Jesus, at least until Easter, but he knew he loved him, and that was enough for him. That’s what we need to do. Hold on to love. Desperately. Like a life preserver in the storm. Nothing else saves, everything else... Read more
I can’t remember the last time I read a novel where I was the villain. The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears is a novel about the thwarted romance between a failing shopkeeper from Ethiopia and a white divorcee whose mixed-race daughter comes into the convenience store after elementary school to read The Brothers Karamazov. Two people who have fled their past lives come into D.C. right at the moment that the money started to pour in; before they can get... Read more
She was sitting on the top of her steps, bundled up in a coat, smoking a cigarette whose smell cut straight through the cold emptiness of the air. “I thought you had quit smoking a long time ago,” I said. “I did. But sometimes you get lonely and there’s no better company in the world.” Read more
at the Federalist: It’s easy to make “About Elly” sound simple. The film (made in 2009 but newly arrived on these shores) from Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, who gave us 2011’s Oscar-winning divorce drama “A Separation,” is about a group of college friends who go off for a vacation by the sea. They bring along Elly (Taraneh Alidoosti), the teacher of one of the friends’ daughters, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. When tragedy strikes, the friends must try... Read more
When the train rushes above ground, we’ve already crossed into the outskirts of the city. The buildings, old brick factories and warehouses, are all marked with the familiar bright red and yellow bubble letters of Disco Dan. The name is everywhere, tagged onto the side of the tracks, buildings, and rusted water towers. A running billboard competing with the ads for Schlitz malt liquor and used-car lots. Disco Dan–offering nothing but himself and his vanity–has them all beat. For as... Read more
Eve Tushnet
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