I’m Psycho for this Book
Next year marks the 20th anniversary of its publication. I think it’s just about the greatest book to come out the last half of the century, American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. It was published in 1991, but I didn’t read it until ’94. I was a junior in high school when this divine novel graced my naughty, sweaty palms. I recall opening my new paperback at the start of my first and only Saturday detention, for skipping a class too much called Early Childhood Development, basically free daycare for parents in a certain network of...
Read MoreJoan Didion, the Memoir, and the Second Great Depression
Let me begin by stating that Joan Didion’s 2005 memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, is almost unbearably brilliant. It won the National Book Award in November 2005 and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. In clipped, precise sentences, Didion describes the sudden death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and the harrowing grief she endured in the following year — during much of which the couple’s only daughter was hospitalized with what would prove to be her own fatal illness. Intertwined with Didion’s own experience is a line attributed to Sir Gawain of King...
Read MoreReview: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Love can be dreamlike. One minute, it's strong as a compass; the next it's completely transformed into doubt and confusion. One minute, lovers feel lighthearted, skipping around the room as if clutching pink balloons; the next, lovers may feel bereft and confused. In the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theater's production of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the company captures that ephemeral quality of love, with a pared-down performance in the round.
Read MoreThe Music Snob Concept
In 1993 I worked at a summer camp. I was only 15 and one of the youngest guys on staff, so I took a fair amount of abuse. One night a few of us were gathered around a radio and someone slipped in a CD not worth remembering. Possibly by Pantera. I casually turned to the guy next to me — a bloated dude with a pony tail who was way too old to be hanging around teenagers — and asked if he knew the song. The guy proceeded to turn red in the face and launch into an angry tirade, listing off obscure bands with whom I was not familiar. The apparent point...
Read MoreOn Landscape Art
Does anyone ever talk about, or even notice landscape paintings anymore? The kind hung in waiting rooms and middle class homes. The snowy red barn. The grey sea gull dipping over acrylic white crests. The sweet sunrise over a lonely brown oak on a yellow prairie. A mountain casting a dark shadow across a blue lake that’s trimmed with purple wildflowers, green grass, and maybe a black cow grazing in the foreground. These sorts of images have no political agenda, zero sense of irony, and leave little to interpret. The paintbrush was simply dipped and...
Read MoreWelcome to the Wild Violet Blog
As part of the redesign, we’re starting an arts blog. Regular contributors will share their thoughts about art, music, movies, writing, and more. We hope it will help create a virtual discussion about the arts and their place in our lives. If you are interested in becoming one of our bloggers, e-mail Wild Violet editor Alyce Wilson. Enjoy the discussion!
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