Category Archives: culture

Visiting Larry McMurtry at Booked Up

A few years ago, back in the days when the LATimes had a stand-alone Sunday magazine, Scott Kraft wrote a tremendous story about visiting Larry McMurtry, the writer, author of "The Last Picture Show," "Lonesome Dove," and "Terms of Endearment," among many other great stories, at his bookstore in tiny Archer City Texas. It's called The Loner.

A couple of noteworthy lines:

McMurtry lives in a majestic three-story home a few doors down from the single-story house where he grew up and not far from the high school where he graduated in 1954 among a senior class of 19. He moved back to Archer City, population 1,848, just five years ago.

He keeps mostly to himself, and locals know better than to try to engage him in chitchat. "He's a very conservative-type feller," says Max Wood, the town's 68-year-old mayor. Wood has known McMurtry since high school but doesn't consider himself a close friend. "Larry was always the type of person who was more of a loner."

Here's a picture of McMurtry, from a photo posted in one of his bookstores in Booked Up:

1-DSC03257-001

Well, to put it simply, to learn that one of this nation's greatest writers has a bookstore — a monster bookstore — in a famous (from "The Last Picture Show") little town in Texas, and what's more hangs out at his store, and can be talked to — well, I had to visit. So yesterday, after attending a reporting workshop that gave me the chance to visit Dallas, two hours away, I did.

More below…

Stupid F*!’&ing Bird: To wake Chekhov from the dead

The big winner this week in theater awards for 2014 in Los Angeles was a Russian playwright who's been dead for over a century. Well, not exactly, but writer Aaron Posner's brilliantly free adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull did win the L.A. Drama Critics Circle awards for best ensemble, direction, and writing. It's just spectacular,Continue reading “Stupid F*!’&ing Bird: To wake Chekhov from the dead”

The photographer as fearless story teller

The highest compliment paid in the land of journalism, sez me, is to say that such-and-such a writer, Mike Royko in Chicago, say, or Carl Hiaasen in Miami, or Joseph Mitchell in New York, is/was "fearless." Well, in the land of photography, no one in our time has been more fearless than Duane Michaels. (NotContinue reading “The photographer as fearless story teller”

Chris Rock on Christmas and Jesus: a rant

Back in 1965, Charles Schultz gave us perhaps the best of all Christmas TV specials. Because it's not just about the season, it's about all that comes with it: depression, loneliness, and self-doubting, as well as family and the sweetness and holiness of the Nativity. It's sad, silly, funny, touching. It won all the bigContinue reading “Chris Rock on Christmas and Jesus: a rant”

The unbearable whiteness of Wild: a black perspective

Perhaps the most interesting meditation on the movie Wild to date comes from Brandon Harris on the Talking Points Memo site. He frames the question a little less provocatively than my headline wondering: Why is camping a white thing?  He points out that the one black character of any stature in Wild, a self-described hobo,Continue reading “The unbearable whiteness of Wild: a black perspective”

Flying tumbling vehicles: #1 movie visual today?

Took a look at the classic old disaster movie, Earthquake, from 1974, which has a great preview/trailer:  This movie surprises, first of all, because its strongest images inadvertently connote 9/11. Not what one expects from a movie set in a natural disaster.  Of course the plausibility question, so often an issue with disaster movies, cannotContinue reading “Flying tumbling vehicles: #1 movie visual today?”

The wisdom of Carl Jung on Eros and love (not)

In my medical experience as well as in my own life I have again and again been faced with the mystery of love, and have never been able to explain what it is. Like Job, I have had to “lay my hand on my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not answer.”

–Carl Jung

Overrated movie of the year: Snowpiercer

Yours truly sees all sorts of movies with alleged environmental messages (even the recent Godzilla, for crying out loud) to see how pop culture understands the on-coming prospect of planetary disaster. One of the best such movies in recent years was "The Host," from South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho, which at least one other criticContinue reading “Overrated movie of the year: Snowpiercer”