Strangers on a Train
Of all the villains I’ve encountered in fiction, I’m struggling to think of one more loathsome than Strangers on a Train’s Charles Bruno. I don’t feel great about it, because any mid-century, gay-coded character deserves at least some empathy, but this spoiled momma’s boy is simply the worst. I don’t begrudge the movie version’s drastic simplification of Strangers, but Robert Walker’s portrayal of Bruno is so spot-on, I kind of wish Hitchcock could have let him take it to the extremes Highsmith’s novel does. I also find it extra fascinating that Bruno presages defining aspects of two very different future Highsmith characters: the acute, forbidden, queer longing of The Price of Salt’s Therese Belivet; and the ambitious, deadly sociopathy of the Ripliad’s Tom Ripley.
More books posts
How to Enter the Art World
L very thoughtfully picked up this great little book for me while she was in Scotland a few months ago. Subtitled “AFTER a late start, a first career, illness, raising children, a crisis of confidence, leaving it in disgust…,” it’s a perfect guide for someone like myself who’s returning to making art in earnest in middle age and trying to get past the imposter syndrome. It begins with a helpful reminder that there are many… See more →
The Diary of a Young Girl
When I changed high schools after the ninth grade, there was some confusion about how each school handled its history curriculum, and in the shuffle, I lamentably never got a formal education in 20th century world history. I assume this is why I was never required to read this book. Reading it now, decades late to the, uh, party, it’s hard not to wonder how it would have affected me as a teen.
Would it… See more →
That Was 2024
My year in review
I was hopeful, if not naive enough to be confident, that enough people were sufficiently fed up with That Fucking Guy to keep him from returning to the White House. But he will, of course, be returning, and while this time his victory isn’t the shock to the system it was in 2016, his popular vote win, a hair shy of a mandate, still stings plenty. The Democratic Party’s subsequent soul-searching might be morbidly comical… See more →
When you’re looking for a good read for the spooky season, and your buddy @_AndreaJanes is kind enough to write a new book for the occasion. 👍🏻 bookshop.org/p/books/a-haun…
My Typical Day
In a revival of an old-school blogging pyramid scheme, my friend Dan Mall wrote about his typical day and tagged me and others to do the same. What follows is a mix of both the aspirational and the factual, and the distance between the two suggests that if life is time management, I’m not especially skilled at life. If you’re not either, read on for sweet, sweet validation.
My alarm goes off at 7:00. These… See more →
Indulging in a pricey collector’s item is a rare occasion for me, but this LeWitt work is an obsession of mine. cubes-revisited.art
Finally found a copy of the book from Sol LeWitt’s original 1974 Incomplete Open Cubes exhibition that cost less than my rent!
A cozy night in with Raymond Chandler.
I finally read @scottmccloud’s Understanding Comics and frankly I’m offended that no educator ever required me to read it.