Stuff We Like
Benjamin Ladner
Quickly, the premise of Salvador Plascencia’s virtuosic first novel, The People of Paper (2005): Ten years after his wife left him, her intolerance of his nightly bedwetting finally outweighing her love, Federico de la Fe makes war to reclaim his subjectivity from the floodwaters of despair. Though flatly crushed for a time in the wake of his abandonment, de la Fe yet summons a martial resolve, as he recruits volunteers and devises strategy for a supernatural campaign, with headquarters in El Monte, California. His opponent in this fantastical war? A force-in-the-sky alternately identified as “Saturn” and “omniscient narration”—yes, de la Fe’s declared foe is the author himself. But what of this war—and why? Froggy, leader of the local street gang El Monte Flores turned footsoldier for de la Fe, is posed the same question by his peers; he answers by calling it “a war for volition and against the commodification of sadness”; whereas de la Fe himself explains, “it is a war against the fate that has been decided for us.” Fucking epic, right? >>
Stuff We Like
Benjamin Ladner
Part memoir, part devastating lyrical elegy, Just Kids (2010) is Patti Smith’s fulfillment of her promise to Robert Mapplethorpe, who, dying of AIDS in 1989, asked his friend to write the story of their lives together. But just as Smith has here given us a kind of memoir, so too has she created something far grander for its literary ambition—and, indeed, for its merit: a text at turns elusive, musical, and deeply affecting, and which bears indelibly the structure and arc of tragedy.
Stuff We Like
Kevin Hilke
Greg Garcia’s first foray into poor, white American life, NBC’s My Name Is Earl, never quite broke free of the stereotypes it mocked, maybe because Earl’s mystical list said little about the human potential of those around him. Fox’s Raising Hope, Garcia’s second go, corrects Earl’s missteps by incarnating magic in the form of a baby, the universal lovable object. This baby is foisted on her 23-year-old father, Jimmy, when her mother is executed.
Stuff We Like
Adam Schaefer
No one believes that this is my favorite movie, but not because I am male. This can’t be anybody’s favorite movie—it’s an airy romantic comedy, one of the latest in a menagerie of ’90s Clueless rip-offs, right? I mean come on, there’s a “what-happens-to-the-characters-after-graduation” dénouement with everyone slo-mo flinging their caps up in triumph. Plus, the sequels [...]
Stuff We Like
Eric Freeman
With the release of Sid and Nancy in 1986, filmmaker Alex Cox was the toast of the indie film community. So he decided to take $6 million from Universal and make the most bizarre biopic ever: Walker, an acid western starring Ed Harris as William Walker, an American filibuster who colonialized and ruled Nicaragua for [...]
