Salvage Heart

As a preview to tonight's screening of Runnin' Down a Dream: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, I interviewed the film's director, Peter Bogdanovich.

The interview focuses on his work on this film and can be found at The Oregonian's Web site, here.

The film is part of the 25th annual Reel Music Festival sponsored by the NW Film Center, and is excellent.

Check out the trailer below--the film screens at 253 minutes (!) plus intermission.

Labels: film, interview, Oregonian, Peter Bogdanovich, Portland, review, Runnin' Down a Dream, Tom Petty

Posts are few and far between right now....

Taylor Clark's Starbucked got the famous-critic critique in this week's NYTBR (and a first-chapter reprint), courtesy of P.J. O'Rourke. It's the sort of feedback that might be nice to get at a writer's workshop, for a first draft, but pretty ugly sprawled across two pages in the Sunday Times.

The lead sets us up:

"There’s a great story to be told about the success of Starbucks. But we’ll have to wait to hear it from somebody other than Taylor Clark."

then

"This is a shame because Clark is an enthusiastic young writer who has the seat of his intellectual pants hooked on the horns of an interesting conflict."

O'Rourke gradually gets around to the upshot: he likes part two of the book, he likes Clark's writing, he likes Clark. His Upfront at the beginning of the NYTBR pull-out is a somewhat interesting read on how to review books:

“I read something I’m reviewing the same way I read other things except more so. That is, I already keep a commonplace book (a file folder, really) for quotations, ideas, information, etc. If I’m going to write a review I mark the work for myself, but besides underlining what interests me I also underline what — as far as I can tell — interested the author. By the time I’m done I have an outline for the review. All I have to do is figure out a smart-aleck lead sentence and a wiseacre ending.”

But the condescension, and the hundreds of words in assault of the book's premise...ouch.

In the p.r. school of "don't read it, measure it," Clark can take heart. that while the review doesn't crack the top-10 most-emailed this week, it sits pretty at #2 in most blogged. And, while probably not the reviewer he would have preferred, it is at least one most readers will have heard of.

Being a NBCC-member (yes, Jane Ciabattari, I got the e-mail...dues were due March 1st...but I sent my membership money to avantguild...they had better party photos...), I should have some sort of critical assessment. I don't, except to say that PJ represents a sensibility for whom the book was not likely written. It is not a business book, but a culture book, and Clark does well with that.

Labels: books, New York Times, P.J. O'Rourke, review, Starbucked, Taylor Clark

I reviewed Miranda July's collection of short stories in today's Oregonian. Liked it.

Advance copy actually came in three (slim) volumes, one pink, one yellow, one orange, and bound with a thick yellow rubber band. Or "gumband" as I understand they say up Pittsburgh-way.



These stories won't be for everyone. In fact, a decent litmus test might be whether or not you like the site July put together for the book.

She's in Portland on Friday, May 18. The event is a benefit for PICA.

Labels: authors, fiction, Miranda July, Oregonian, Portland, review, short stories, writing

My review of Michael Chabon's long-delayed The Yiddish Policemen's Union ran today in The Oregonian. I liked it. I think I'll probably like it more over time.

Sammy Clay: "I didn't know they were making detectives out of Jews."

Detective Lieber: "They just started. I'm kind of the prototype."
--from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
Lots of coverage of this one, which I have studiously avoided, first to avoid polluting my own limited faculties with other people's ideas, then to avoid highlighting the errant ways of my own writing. Help yourself, however:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/01/arts/bookmer.php (Kakutani in the International Herald Tribune)
http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/books/la-bk-ulin29apr29,1,6103230.story?coll=la-headlines-bookreview (LA Times)
http://www.esquire.com/fiction/book-review/jew0507 (Esquire...for the articles, I tell ya)
and this one that I did read, the Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117763122648184171-b9edIOKICZmr0eOnlVX5XtVvH3I_20070526.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top

A quick look shows critics getting their yids in, dropping Philip Marlowe mentions, and pondering where Chabon has been since K&C.

My theory? Check Chabon's Web site, on which he was do his own coding, which he taught himself. You can't check it b/c it's gone. But the fact that he was teaching himself PHP or whatever, while committing himself to research, while ostensibly writing a book suggests that there were too many cooks in the creative kitchen. Just a hunch.

I had hoped to get to a quick review of David Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, which I recently read for the first time. It is outstanding (regardless of whatever Chabon's claims to research are, none of his homicide investigations approach that which David Simon renders). But hope, mon frere, gives way to paint fumes on this Sunday evening. Some other time, perhaps.

Labels: authors, books, crime, fiction, Michael Chabon, Oregonian, review, Yiddish Policemen's Union

A few published items since last post:

Talk of the Book Town misreads coordinates, and ends up at William T. Vollman's talk at Powell's on Thursday March 15. Apologies to Tim Flannery, whose event I had been scheduled to cover. This is obviously unrelated to a vast conspiracy to obfuscate the global warming crisis. NO ONE has written more extensively about the hidden islands of the arctic than me.

My review of Elizabeth Hickey's new novel The Wayward Muse runs. A thank-you note is unlikely.

Looking Glass Books makes its move to Sellwood, and no mention is made of the irony of a bookstore finding its fate conjoined with that of a caboose. (looking for an article link...)

Finally, from the annals of the unpublished: a rejection notice from the good folks at 33 1/3, who deigned not to pluck my proposal from the 400+ to be one of the series' next 20 to be issued. Disappointing but no surprise: the readership did not jump for joy at the prospect of a book about Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever. A competing proposal suggested Damn the Torpedoes. Four more people took the time to write up queries for (and I hesitate to even type this as I don't want to inadvertently draw any of her fan-traffic) Tori Amos' Boys for Pele (not linked). (UPDATE: New titles in the series announced, INCLUDING Tori Amos?!)

Labels: fiction, Looking Glass, Oregonian, Portland, Powell's, review, Talk of the Book Town, William T. Vollmann

My review of Daniel Alarcón's Lost City Radio ran in Sunday's Oregonian. The advance readers copy has a slightly different cover than the final. Maybe I'll scan it in if I can find it. Alarcón will be at Powell's on Tuesday (look for $6 remaindered copies of War by Candlelight, his strong debut story collection, there as well).

There's an illuminating interview with the author from last fall on the Loggernaut reading series site:

And of course, a round-up of other reviews.
Christian Science Monitor (courtesy of Powells.com)
SF Chronicle (Alan Cheuse)
and others I haven't read yet.

Labels: books, Daniel Alarcón, fiction, Oregonian, review