Jessica Schneider

Book Review: Esther's Inheritance by Sandor Marai.

2011-12-14T22:29:00.000-06:00

Click title for review. Marai is an asskicker.

Book Review: I Am Better Than Your Kids by Maddox.

2011-12-14T22:26:00.002-06:00

I realized I had forgotten to link to my book review.

Walt Whitman: American Experience (Subt. español).

2011-11-16T08:21:00.000-06:00

Excellent Whitman PBS doc. available online.

Yukio Mishima Speaking In English

2011-09-18T19:32:00.000-05:00

Book Review: Vita Sexualis (Tuttle Classics) by Ogai Mori.

2011-08-12T14:51:00.000-05:00

Click title for review.

Book Review: The Wild Geese (Tuttle Classics) by Ogai Mori.

2011-08-06T17:49:00.000-05:00

Book Review: The Three Cornered World by Soseki Natsume.

2011-07-24T16:21:00.001-05:00

Click above title for review.

Book Review: The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata

2011-07-11T18:24:00.000-05:00

Click the above title for review.

C. Anthony (Featuring Astro Jones) OFFICIAL RELEASE

2011-07-10T19:20:00.001-05:00

Catchy song--give a listen!C. Anthony (Featuring Astro Jones) OFFICIAL RELEASE by DynamicBeats

Think the Casey Anthony Verdict is Full of Shit?

2011-07-06T21:32:00.001-05:00

Me too. So what can we citizens do? A few things, to start.

1) Sign this petition for Caylee's Law. The site notes: "Caylee's Law, contact your Senator and Representative: there should be a new federal law created called Caylee's Law that will make it a federal offense for a parent or guardian to not notify law enforcement of a child going missing in a timely manner.
Let's keep another case like Caylee Anthony out of the courts."

2) Contact Tim Miller of Texas Equusearch who is trying to get feedback about a lawsuit against Casey Anthony demanding financial compensation for his search efforts back in '08 for the hours wasted on searching for a child she admitted she knew was dead. That time could have been spent searching for real lost kids. Visit the FB petition here.

3) I am declaring that it should be a felony for anyone to make an "accident" appear like a homicide.

4) And this is the most important--it is imperative that we do not contribute to Casey Anthony becoming rich off the death of her daughter. She may very well become so, but it won't be because of me. While I am tired of talentless celebs receiving book deals, to give one to someone many (including me) believe killed her child, is appalling. I don't care that the jury acquitted her. I don't believe she is innocent. Do NOT purchase any book she writes/publishes, and in addition, do NOT buy any books by that publisher OR that LITERARY AGENCY that chooses to profit off her. Dan and I have been rejected 1000s of times by agents, despite our excellent quality and popular website (235 million visitors and counting), but alas, we are not media whores. Any agency/publisher that represents Casey Anthony's book(s) is a disgrace.

And by the way--I may well write a more detailed response to this whole thing, but for the record, I don't pretend to know this family or know this child--it is more of a philosophical despondency I have. I realize that many kids are murdered and none get talked about like this one. I realize that. I expected justice to be served and it was not. I refuse to participate in the profiting off the death of this child and I encourage everyone to do the same.

UPDATE: A new petition here. The description states: "It is morally incorrect that Casey Anthony should profit from the murder of her daughter in any way, shape or form. Therefore, no movies or book deals shall be offered to Casey Anthony that would be of financial profit or gain to her."

Book Review: A Cat, a Man, and Two Women by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki

2011-07-06T08:39:00.002-05:00

Book Review: Diary of a Mad Old Man by Junichiro Tanizaki .

2011-06-29T08:13:00.002-05:00

Click title for review.

Book Review: Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse

2011-03-06T14:57:00.000-06:00

Click above title for link.

Book Review: Portraits of a Marriage by Sandor Marai

2011-02-27T18:37:00.000-06:00

Click title for review.

Book Review: The Master of Go by Yasunari Kawabata

2011-02-20T13:04:00.002-06:00

Click title for review.

Book Review: The Promise: A Novel of China and Burma by Pearl S. Buck

2011-02-13T12:52:00.000-06:00

Click above title for link.

Book Review: Japan At War: An Oral History by Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook

2011-02-06T13:43:00.000-06:00

Click title for review.

Book Review: Harp of Burma (Tuttle Classics) by Michio Takeyama

2011-01-23T15:49:00.002-06:00

Click title for link.

Book Review: Echoes of Chongqing: Women in Wartime China by Danke Li

2011-01-20T17:56:00.002-06:00

Book Review: Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse

2011-01-16T19:48:00.000-06:00

Book Review: I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like by Justin Isis

2011-01-10T08:30:00.000-06:00

Click above title for review.

Book Review: The Silent Cry by Kenzaburo Oe.

2010-12-28T22:25:00.003-06:00

Click the above title for review.

Holiday Wish.

2010-12-24T16:08:00.000-06:00

*★Merry★* 。 • ˚ ˚ ˛ ˚ ˛ •
•。★Christmas★ 。* 。
° 。 ° ˛˚˛ * _Π_____*。*˚
˚ ˛ •˛•˚ /______/~＼。˚ ˚ ˛
*° •˛• ☃｜田田｜門｜ ☃˚╰☆╮And a Happy New Year｡•

Book Review: Autumn In Spring and Other Stories by Ba Jin

2010-12-19T22:27:00.000-06:00

Click title for review.

Check out Jason Sanford in Interzone.

2010-12-15T23:05:00.000-06:00

My good pal Jason Sanford has three stories and an interview published in the current edition of Interzone, on sale now at your local bookstore. Dan has read the stories and said good words about them: the writing is lean, focused, well wrought, etc.

I plan to read them very soon--I've been so busy reading and reviewing these novels that it is hard to squeeze them all in. But to those who love SF, Jason is your man. He's more Asimov/Clarke vein. More will follow soon.

Book Review: Mon (The Gate) by Natsume Soseki.

2010-12-08T22:16:00.000-06:00

Click the title for review. This is my own photo of Soseki books I purchased in New Mexico.

Book Review: Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

2010-12-01T22:38:00.000-06:00

Click on the above title for review.

Book Review: The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima

2010-11-27T22:08:00.002-06:00

Click above title for review.

DVD Review: Frisky, Furry and Fearsome

2010-11-17T20:45:00.000-06:00

How fun is this? Click title for review.

Book Review: Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale by Nagai Kafu

2010-11-15T21:30:00.000-06:00

Click the above link for review.

DVD Review: The Crown of the Continent

2010-11-12T22:28:00.000-06:00

Here's my review of this nature doc.

Book Review: American Stories by Nagai Kafu.

2010-11-09T09:07:00.000-06:00

Click the title for review.

Book Review: The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa by Yasunari Kawabata

2010-11-03T11:35:00.000-05:00

Click the above title for review. Or on Seattle PI.

Book Review: And Then by Natsume Soseki.

2010-10-22T17:52:00.000-05:00

Book Review: Secret Rendezvous by Kobo Abe.

2010-10-13T16:58:00.000-05:00

Click title for review.

Book Review: Quicksand by Junichiro Tanizaki.

2010-10-10T16:21:00.002-05:00

Click the title for review.

Book Review: Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata.

2010-10-05T18:54:00.001-05:00

Click the above title for review.

The English Language In 24 Accents

2010-10-03T18:08:00.000-05:00

This video has been entertaining me several times over. Quite good and very funny!

The Real Scandal At The Virginia Quarterly Review.

2010-09-23T08:36:00.003-05:00

One of my website’s fans forwarded me a link to a recent New York Times article with the tabloid title, A Suicide Leaves A Literary Journal And Its Editor In Limbo. As I have a popular website and traverse through 15-1600 emails per week, I actually get many, MANY links to online stories about the absurd, the literary, the artistic, the scientific, the scandalous, the political, etc., and sometimes several of these formats are in one tale. The story detailed the editor of a university literary journal’s supposed bullying one of his underlings into committing suicide. The story, as the phrase now goes, went viral online, and within a few days there were literally tens of thousands of hand-wringing accounts about the ‘incident.’ On many literary blogs the editor was personally condemned as cold and unfeeling, even as his ‘editorial prowess’ was praised as visionary, even within the original article. But, in scouring many sources online, the basic thrust of the story is as such: one of the staff members of the journal committed suicide, either because of one or both of two salacious reasons: a) he was a ‘victim’ of the tyrannical editor’s workplace abuse, or b) he was imputed to be a lonely, aging homosexual, albeit most of the references were not so bold as to come out and state that, using weasel words, instead, to impute the dead man.... Click title for link.

Book Review: The Crystal World by J. G. Ballard.

2010-09-21T17:18:00.001-05:00

Click the title for the review.

Book Review: Forbidden Colors by Yukio Mishima.

2010-09-21T14:24:00.000-05:00

Click the above title for review.

Why I Am Letting My Poets & Writers Subscription Lapse

2010-09-08T08:59:00.003-05:00

For about a quarter of a century I have been a subscriber to Poets & Writers magazine. In the early days, before it went glossy, and was more or less a newsletter, I found it useful as a place to send around my then callow poems, and even to find out about gatherings and readings. I also had the naïve youthful belief that my subscription somehow (like the money dropped in my church’s collection plates) went to help those in need; in this case, young writer of quality, or programs devoted to helping such. As the years have gone on I have still subscribed (despite the functionary matters I most used it for now being available freely online, and in many other online sources) and read through its increasingly poorly written articles, and even ignored the fact that, despite its title, the magazine really did nothing to even discuss, much less promote, the art of poetry and writing. It became merely an advertising tool, via its ads and ads thinly veiled as articles to promote MFA programs, bad writers, scam publishers, and clueless agents and editors...

Read Dan's kick ass essay here.

More book reviews will be up in time.

Book Review: "Remember You're A One-Ball!" by Quentin S. Crisp.

2010-08-01T17:14:00.000-05:00

Click the above title for my review.

Book Review: The Gourmet Club by Junichiro Tanizaki.

2010-07-26T08:55:00.000-05:00

Click the above title to read the review.

Book Review: Acts of Worship by Yukio Mishima.

2010-07-26T08:52:00.001-05:00

Click the above title for this review.

Book Review: House of Sleeping Beauties by Yasunari Kawabata.

2010-07-23T08:51:00.000-05:00

Click the title for review.

Book Review: The Waiting Years by Fumiko Enchi.

2010-07-19T08:40:00.000-05:00

Click the title to read the review in PopMatters.

Book Review: The Lake by Yasunari Kawabata

2010-07-18T20:53:00.000-05:00

Click the above title for the review.

Book Review: Naomi by Junichiro Tanizaki.

2010-06-30T14:32:00.002-05:00

Click on title above to read.

Book Review: The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata.

2010-06-28T20:00:00.003-05:00

Book Review: Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata.

2010-06-23T20:59:00.001-05:00

Click the title above to read my 1st review in PopMatters. More will follow. Hopefully it was worth the wait.

Book Review: Sanshiro (Penguin Classics) by Natsume Soseki.

2010-06-10T08:46:00.001-05:00

Good book. Funny that Penguin boasts about this "new translation" which sucks. Read my review by clicking on the above title or in Seattle PI.

Book Review: Some Prefer Nettles by Junichiro Tanizaki.

2010-06-02T07:36:00.000-05:00

Click the link above to read my review. Or read it on the Seattle PI.

Book Review: Palm-of-the-Hand Stories by Yasunari Kawabata.

2010-05-26T08:33:00.000-05:00

Click the above title for the review. Also click here to read on Seattle PI.

Upcoming Book Reviews.

2010-05-21T12:49:00.000-05:00

Some have been searching my blog for Japanese book reviews. I am reporting that as of right now, the above photo is my "to read" pile, excluding some Mori Ōgai, which I will request from pubs, a few Endo novels I plan to request, and some Lafcadio Hearn.

What you see here are lots of Soseki Natsume, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata, Kenzaburo Oe, Kobo Abe, and Ibuse Masuji, among others. All will receive thoughtful reviews, but I am only one person with one pair of eyes. The pile will get smaller as time goes on, and it will be replaced by others I request from pubs. In the mean time, I am reading and also working on a new book, so that is why I am so busy, but I will slowly get these out for the reading public.

Book Review: Botchan (Tuttle Classics) by Soseki Natsume.

2010-05-10T23:58:00.002-05:00

Click the above title to read my review.

Book Review: I Am a Cat by Soseki Natsume.

2010-05-04T08:29:00.001-05:00

Click on the above title to check out my review of this Soseki Classic. Enjoyable, esp. for those who love cats and hate academics. In addition to the BC link, the review reappears in the Seattle PI!

Book Review: Rashomon and Other Stories (Tuttle Classics) by Ryunosuke Akutagawa.

2010-04-18T15:18:00.000-05:00

Click the title for the review of this book by Tuttle. Oh, and check it out. I'm syndicated. My review appears in the Seattle PI.

They're definitely getting read. More novel reviews will follow. I have some books coming from some publishers--all Japanese of course.

Book Review: Fires on the Plain (Tuttle Classics) by Shohei Ooka.

2010-04-15T22:26:00.000-05:00

Click the title to read this review of this great Classic. A terrific read.

Book Review: The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai.

2010-04-13T21:03:00.000-05:00

Just look how depressed he was. Click the above title for this review.

Book Review: Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima.

2010-04-10T18:11:00.002-05:00

Click the title to read the review of this book that marks the first in Mishima's The Sea of Fertility series.

Tuttle Press is sending me 4 books of Japanese writers to review, so I am looking forward to those. I still have much to get though, and all 4 books in this series will be reviewed.

Book Review: Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata.

2010-03-31T18:50:00.000-05:00

Read it here.

Book Review: The Izu Dancer & Other Stories by Yasumari Kawabata and Yasushi Inoue.

2010-03-28T13:35:00.000-05:00

Click the above link to read my review. Still need to read a bunch more of Kawabata. This collection only contains one of his stories.

Book Review: Patriotism by Yukio Mishima.

2010-03-24T22:57:00.001-05:00

Read my review here. I am Mishima. I am buff and bad ass and I cut my stomach open.

Book Review: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima.

2010-03-24T08:22:00.000-05:00

Read my review here.

Yukio Mishima Docs.

2010-03-20T23:12:00.000-05:00

Been watching some of these docs on Mishima. He was only 5'1" and hence the bodybuilding and machismo. I'm reading his books now and he's an excellent writer, just very troubled and weird in his suicidal beliefs.

Book Review: Kokoro by Natsume Soseki.

2010-03-19T22:53:00.000-05:00

Read my review here.

Book Review: Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness: Four Short Novels by Kenzaburo Oe.

2010-03-15T19:02:00.002-05:00

Read the review here.

Book Review: The Samurai by Shusaku Endo.

2010-03-10T16:53:00.000-06:00

Read my review here.

DVD Review: Gates of the Arctic: Alaska’s Brooks Range.

2010-03-08T13:52:00.001-06:00

Read my review of this doc here.

Book Review: A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oë.

2010-03-04T08:07:00.000-06:00

Click the above title to read my review. A book for grownups.

Book Review: The Key by Junichiro Tanizaki.

2010-02-28T11:33:00.000-06:00

I posted my review of The Key on Examiner.

Book Review: Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima.

2010-02-22T08:25:00.000-06:00

Yukio Mishima is one of those writers who, like Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun, is likely more known for his outrageous political beliefs than for his work itself. This is not to say that Mishima’s work is not well known among certain literary circles, but as he came recommended, I was told not only of his cult like following, but also of his suicide, where he committed the ritual act of seppuku at the age of forty-five....

Mishima eventually became a body builder.

Book Review: The Box Man by Kobo Abe.

2010-02-12T20:09:00.000-06:00

Read my review here. About a man who wears a box on his head and even at some point masturbates in it. Hopefully, following the act, he wiped it with a rag.

Book Review: Five by Endo by Shusaku Endo.

2010-02-10T08:37:00.000-06:00

Read my review of this great collection of tales at Examiner. Endo is a terrific writer!

Book Review: The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe.

2010-02-09T08:52:00.001-06:00

Read my review here. This is one of the best books I've ever read.

Here is what Abe looked like. Why is it that writers need to be smoking as to make themselves appear like the Brooding Intellectual? Well, I don't care for guys who smoke, or those who wear 1960s glasses, but Abe wasn't too shabby.

Book Review: The Face of Another by Kobo Abe.

2010-02-06T13:01:00.000-06:00

This is a review of a new writer for me. I'll be reviewing a number of his books. Read the review here.

Great Lem Dobbs Interview.

2010-01-25T22:13:00.001-06:00

I loved Dark City when I saw it and thought it was one of the best films to come out of the '90s and definitely one of the all time greatest sci-fi films. The Limey is also excellent, and I watched that a number of years later, unbeknown to be that they were both written by the same person--Lem Dobbs.

Dan sent around an email today and here's what he said about it:

Here it is. For those of you wanting to read a Hollywood Insider blast the current PC culture of film and art, Lem Dobbs kicks ass. This interview is longer than the Mark Rowlands interview, by over 16k words, and nearly twice as long as the landmark Steven Pinker interview.

It's a masterpiece, and makes me feel proud of my website and that ONLY the Internet provides treats like this to the masses, because only it has people with passion, not driven by LCD interests.

Enjoy, and get any pals of yours who enjoy film and the arts to read.

DAN
http://www.cosmoetica.com/DSI21.htm

DS: This DSI is with a screenwriter who has participated in some of the best films to be released in the last couple of decades, Lem Dobbs. Thanks for agreeing to discuss your work, career, opinions, and views on life and especially film. For those readers to whom the name Lem Dobbs draws a blank stare, could you please provide a précis on who you are: what you do, what your aims in your career are, major achievements, and your general philosophy, etc.?

Book Review: The Ship of Fools by Cristina Peri Rossi.

2010-01-25T21:09:00.000-06:00

Read my review here.

Book Review: A Plague upon Humanity: The Hidden History of Japan's Biological Warfare Program by Daniel Barenblatt.

2010-01-19T20:24:00.000-06:00

Read my review here.

Robert Hayden: A Tribute.

2010-01-18T19:34:00.001-06:00

First of all, happy MLK Day. Something as of late got me thinking about Robert Hayden, so I thought he could use a bit of highlighting.

Here are just some of his excellent poems:

Frederick Douglass

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues' rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

Monet's Waterlilies

Today as the news from Selma and Saigon
poisons the air like fallout,
I come again to see
the serene, great picture that I love.

Here space and time exist in light
the eye like the eye of faith believes.
The seen, the known
dissolve in iridescence, become
illusive flesh of light
that was not, was, forever is.

O light beheld as through refracting tears.
Here is the aura of that world
each of us has lost.
Here is the shadow of its joy.

Dan goes into detail as far as defending his work here. And here is another defense, involving a Clueless Canadian. Hayden is such a contrast to the crap that you'll find today--the ability to get political, yet still retain the art within seems to be something that has been lost.

Book Review: Enchanted Rock: A Natural and Human History by Lance Allred.

2010-01-14T14:41:00.000-06:00

Read my review here. A great book for any nature lover or Texas lover or both.

DSI.

2010-01-13T16:34:00.002-06:00

Dan has a new interview with The Rude Pundit. It's kind of a disappointment and made me depressed. I've always enjoyed TRP's blog, but his thoughts on writing and art are just so dull and conventional. He's the anti-Rowlands. Why? Because TRP makes the lazy and ill-informed claim that "art is subjective" when that is total bullshit. Again, were that true, then one could lump the plays of the VT gunman beside those of Ibsen and Shakespeare. Why not, if it's all subjective? Then he claims that "Harold Pinter is a great writer. Period." Again, why? If it's all subjective, then there is no such thing as good and bad let alone great. It's just lame, lazy shit and Dan rips him another asshole with that one. He reeks of academia and this is one of the reasons why I hate academics--they're just as elitist and PC as the shit they decry. TRP also regularly refers to Ann Coulter as a cunt, and while this may be true, it's hardly controversial amid a liberal English dept at a university.

Rowlands (another academic so it's not like I'm claiming they're all bad) makes the claim in his book Fame (which I reviewed) that the reason we're suffering this "Collapse of Enlightenment" as he calls it, is due to our "inability to distinguish quality from bullshit." Or objective standards, in other words. By claiming everything is subjective, it is like saying everyone is special because if everyone is special then no one is special. You see the paradox? People build self-esteem when they work for something and get better at it. If everything is subjective then there is nothing to improve and no reason to even get out of bed in the morning. Public approbation does not = quality, lest Danielle Steel is the greatest writer who has ever lived. And who wants to claim that? Or can't you, since it's all subjective?

We live in a sick fame and celebrity obsessed culture that does not value the quality of one's work, but how known the work is and what others say about it, without real individual thought. People have forgotten how to think. (But not how to network apparently!) Rowlands said it best when he offered his reason: "Thinking is hard." And any writer who has not gotten "recognition" according to society's standards, is thus a failed writer.

Which only leads me to say: Go Fuck Yourself.

Emily Dickinson: not published till way after her death. An obvious failure.

I can't think of a bigger failure and loser than Franz Kafka. Unpublished at the time of his death. I heard he couldn't even get a date! I mean just look at him!

Most of the critics of his day said Whitman was bad. They were clearly right. Failure.

And this guy was a failure too, since so many in his day thought he sucked. That's why he cut off his ear.

Sorry, Dan has no photos of himself to add, but someday I imagine his name will be lumped not too far away.

One woman explains how she got the heat and electricity back in her home.

2010-01-12T14:08:00.002-06:00

Book Review: Deep River by Shusaku Endo

2010-01-08T18:22:00.000-06:00

Read my review here.

Book Review: Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro.

2010-01-02T16:04:00.000-06:00

Read my review here.

Get a job

2009-12-29T15:39:00.011-06:00

Drunken perverts from Scotland who are also not welcome on my blog.

Book Review: Beneath the Wheel by Hermann Hesse.

2009-12-28T07:54:00.000-06:00

Read my review here.

My Fave Christmas Song.

2009-12-23T17:44:00.002-06:00

"Family Guy" Top Ten with Stewie.

2009-12-23T16:46:00.002-06:00

Book Review: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

2009-12-21T08:12:00.000-06:00

This is not the version I read, but my review can be found here.

Book Review: Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun.

2009-12-15T13:59:00.001-06:00

Read my review here.

Oscar Wilde Bio.

2009-12-15T13:30:00.000-06:00

Found this Oscar Wilde bio on You Tube, courtesy of what seems to be the Biography Channel (I don't have cable). Anyway, I uploaded the whole thing here for you to watch if you like, though there might be a missing clip, I'm not sure. (Not sure why part 6 is under 2 mins.) I just post according to the numbering. You'll get the idea.

Roger Ebert Rocks!

2009-12-12T13:34:00.000-06:00

It has been an exciting couple of days here at home. For one thing, Dan discovered that the most famous critic in the country, Roger Ebert, had said some very thoughtful words about Dan's film reviews and Cosmoetica. (Click title at top for link). Dan has always spoken highly of Mr. Ebert's literary flair with words, and I admit to enjoying a good Roger Ebert read about whatever film, even when I disagree.

If I am to make a "critical" comparison, Ebert is Emerson and Dan is Whitman. Reason being? Putting aside that Dan actually is a great poet himself and we're just talking about film criticism, Emerson was the most famous writer in his day. Whitman was a working class guy who sent the famed writer a copy of his then slim volume of Leaves of Grass. Emerson praised his work. Whitman also had many who hated him for their own petty biases.

It is nice to see Dan's intelligence, insights and hard work be recognized. It's a great thing. Dan is crafting his thoughtful thank you letter to Mr. Ebert as I type. I think it says a lot about Mr. Ebert as a man to acknowledge the talent in someone else and not take any "criticisms" of his film opinions personally. Critics criticize. This is what critics do.

Mr. Ebert, thank you for taking the time to notice and thoughtfully comment on what has been all these years.

DVD Review: Remembered Earth: New Mexico’s High Desert

2009-12-10T15:33:00.000-06:00

Read my review of this doc here.

Enucleation and Updates.

2009-12-07T13:45:00.003-06:00

I notice they just changed the format of Blogger--it's nothing you can tell by reading, only if you have a Blogger acct and you're going to post it. Grrr. I don't like change.

So if you're wondering what I've been up to, the answer is a bunch of things. On a personal level, Apollo (my orange kitty at the top) had to have his right eye removed because of glaucoma. The doc said that it was ulcerated and would have eventually burst, if it was not eventually removed. His pressure was up to 51, which is very high (it shouldn't be more than in the 20s) so he was obviously feeling pain. Now he has stitches and has to wear an e-collar. You can see him resting here. Not to worry, the more grisly photos appear on my FB page.

Other than that, I've been reading a ton of books, (note reviews below) because I am already thinking out my next book, which will be historical. I remember the last time I sent around a historical book to lit agents, I had good response, but was ultimately rejected because I wasn't black like my lead character. Isn't racism great? Imagine if they rejected a black person because that person was not white. Then I'm regularly seeing books getting published by white people about black characters, or Chinese characters or Japanese characters, etc. Not like it fucking matters. The real reason is that these agents are fucking lazy drones. It would be one thing if their biases and idiocy were consistent. Then I could at least accept it, even if frustrated by it. But when they say things that are simply untrue, it pisses me off. (Long books don't sell, books set in the past don't sell, books written by white people about other cultures don't sell). Don't even get me started.

I had one agent email me to try to solicit me to purchase her shitty "how to get published" book. She obviously sent it to everyone she's ever rejected--real classy. Anyway, I told her maybe if you took on writers that have an online presence and readership (150+ million reads thus far) you'd actually get people buying your books. Nepotism ain't gonna get people running to the bookstore, sweetcakes. A built in audience will. And given she can't see the sales potential (setting aside quality) in Cosmoetica, what the fuck kind of useful advice could her book possibly offer me? Fuck you.

I've been reading some very rewarding books, the last one was quite good (The Sea and Poison) and more reviews will be up in time. My reasons for not blogging do not involve lack of passion, creativity, or effort, after all, I've been reviewing, posting Examiner posts as well as to Cinemension (I will be posting about this film that annoyed me shortly). Dan will be starting a new book in the New Year, and I have my own literary goals set aside. I'm brainstorming, thinking up characters for my historical book. I want to go back to historical because my last few have all been set in contemporary times. I need the challenge.

And the last bit of info I found was someone on some site somewhere recommending writers to read "how to" writing books. I couldn't disagree more. The best way to learn how to be a great writer is to actually read great writers. Reading some "how to" book or going to some MFA program isn't gonna do it. Sorry. That's like asking a lit agent to have literary insight. They don't even have marketing insight so how the fuck could we expect them to actually have literary insight? There are no 6 week courses to teach you how to become Emily Dickinson. You either have it or you don't. You either keep writing because it drives you, because you have no other choice but to fulfill the desire to create great art. Doing it for fame is not going to get you anywhere. Forget fame. Fuck fame. If that's all you care about then it will eventually fuck you.

Jason Sanford has a short story called "Enucleation Means to Remove an Eye." It's taken on new meaning since Apollo. =^.^=

Book Review: The Sea and Poison by Shusaku Endo.

2009-12-07T08:19:00.000-06:00

Read my review here.

Something Very Cute.

2009-12-04T08:48:00.001-06:00

Book Review: Unit 731 Testimony by Hal Gold.

2009-12-04T08:23:00.001-06:00

Read my review here.

Book Review: Up Shit Creek: A Collection of Horrifyingly True Wilderness Toilet Misadventures.

2009-11-30T13:09:00.003-06:00

Read all about the shit here.