Invisible Man (Paperback)

by Ralph Ellison

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The New Wave: On the State of Indian Fiction in America 3

For all the merits of these books, the question remains: is this literary boomlet an anomaly, a coincidence, or a harbinger?

Becoming James Brown: On RJ Smith's The One 3

What Brown wanted to do was lay down a strutting, macho anthem marked by explosions of brass and a guitar that sounds like chrome wheels spinning. He hums a melody to the sax player and a bass line to the bassist. He thumps out a beat for the drummer. He watches a trumpet player struggle, fires him, then re-hires him moments later. And when the singer is ready, he screams out a set of lyrics scratched on a sheet of paper. The song is called “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.”

Robert Birnbaum in Conversation with John Sayles 7

"For a filmmaker to have made 17 movies in 35 years is pretty good. And most of them — we don’t always have enough money to do them justice, but most of them, there was no fighting a rear guard action against a studio to change things or tell you who to cast or whatever, so I have been really lucky."

Cultic with a Chance of Rain: The Novel and Cults and Novels about Cults 3

While The Gospel of Anarchy and Big Machine portray cult largely as madness - albeit a seductive sort of madness - The Instructions and The Book of Dave render cult as that other thing it can be: the basis of a new religion. All four invite reading, tongue-in-cheek, of sections of their text as scripture. The Instructions, naturally, is entirely scripture.

James Ross and The Agony of the One-Hit Wonder 13

James Ross published just one novel in his lifetime. This is a rare thing because of a paradox that lies at the heart of novel writing: it demands such sustained focus, such persistence, so much raw pig-headed stubbornness that anyone who does it once almost invariably does it again, and again, and again. Once is almost never enough.

The Millions

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