Category: Books

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My Writers: Oliver Sacks

Dan Seeger

Like a lot of people, I suppose, my introduction to Oliver Sacks came through the movie Awakenings. Based on the nonfiction account of the same name, written by Sacks, the film depicted the efforts of a physician to treat catatonic patients in a Bronx hospital, bringing a heightened empathy and commitment to exploring possible solutions to a group of people who had been largely disregarded by other doctors, relegated to the category of the untreatable. The doctor finds success in a treatment, although it is tragically fleeting. In the film, Sacks is renamed Dr. Malcolm Sayer and played by Robin … Continue reading My Writers: Oliver Sacks

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Great Moments in Literature

Dan Seeger

“I go back to the porch and stand there for a minute. The sky is darker. I can see a firefly or two. One of the little boys in the neighborhood passes by on his bike, all shiny blue, with training wheels on the back. There are streamers on the handlbars. The cat that kills birds walks by. I’ve been known to fill a water pistol and squirt the cat when nobody’s looking. I’ve also turned the hose on it. It walks on the edge of our lawn. I know just what it’s thinking.” –Ann Beattie, “Home to Marie,” 1986 … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

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Great Moments in Literature

Dan Seeger

“‘I was hoping we’d go together.’ I winced at hearing myself reproduce the tones of some minor courtier, or possible those of Ralph Bellamy in a movie belonging to Cary Grant.” –Jonathan Lethem, Chronic City, 2009 “MIDNIGHT IN MANHATTAN: ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE LOOK UP FOR A MOMENT FROM THEIR AIMLESS, POINTLESS SCURRYINGS — LOOK UP, AND ARE WARMED BY THE ROCKET’S BATHING GLOW. THEN, THEY LOWER THEIR HEADS ONCE MORE, AND THEIR HALF-DREAMS DIE A-BORNING…” –Roy Thomas, FANTASTIC FOUR, Vol. 1, No. 159, “Havoc in the Hidden Land!” 1975 Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

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Great Moments in Literature

Dan Seeger

“‘Well, Tommy,’ he said, pulling on his Albert-Einstein-riding-an-invisible-bicycle sweatshirt, ‘the fact is that most childhood fears that carry on into adulthood tend to be sexual in nature. Particularly, I would think, if they have to do with monkeys.’” –Bradley Denton, Lunatics, 1996 “NEW YORK IN AUGUST. THE VERY BEST TIME NOT TO PLAN A TRIP TO FUN CITY, AS ITS EX-MAYOR USED TO CALL IT…BEFORE HE GOT OUT! THE TEMPERATURE RARELY DROPS BELOW EIGHTY…THE AIR HANGS HAZY AND BURNS IF IT GETS IN YOUR EYES…AND THE CLOSEST THING TO RAIN IS THE SCATTERED DRIPPING OF EIGHT MILLION AIR CONDITIONERS. NEW … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

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My Writers: John Irving

Dan Seeger

When I was a kid, few things drew me to a book more assuredly than the existence of a corresponding movie. This could go in either direction, by the way. The nineteen-seventies and eighties were a sort of golden age for novelizations of movies, and I was happy to devour them. Similarly, if a movie was based on a book, inexpensive paperback copies were usually readily available, stocked generously into racks at the supermarket. In retrospect, I think I used it as a rough guidepost as to which books were worthy of my scattered attention. If the story existed in … Continue reading My Writers: John Irving

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My Writers: Anthony Bourdain

Dan Seeger

I own a Global kitchen knife because of Anthony Bourdain. Kitchen Confidential, originally published in 2000, was one of those rare books that became a sensation, stirring up interest among a wide range of readers, most of them charged up by the sense they were receiving a glimpse of something wonderfully secretive about the restaurant industry. At the time, Bourdain was the head chef at New York’s Brasserie Les Halles, but he was also an accomplished enough writer that he had a couple food-themed crime novels under his belt. Kitchen Confidential was his coming out as a nonfiction writer, providing a … Continue reading My Writers: Anthony Bourdain

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My Writers: Art Spiegelman

Dan Seeger

It was in high school that I started defensively insisting on the artistic value of comic book storytelling. Although in deference to the subject of this point, I should say it was co-mix narratives I was stumping for. Spiegelman prefers that nomenclature, undoubtedly in part because it is has some of the hardscrabble spirit of the term “comix,” which was used for the underground, head shop publications that served as his developmental home. But Spiegelman was even more specific in his choice, adding the hyphen to emphasize the two different words parts, each suggesting an intermingling of elements, in this … Continue reading My Writers: Art Spiegelman

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Great Moments in Literature

Dan Seeger

“While he was watching, Polly walked the length of the porch and bent over to scrape something out of a bucket — lye soap, it looked like. She was a pretty woman, light of step; he had always fancied women who were light of step. The sight of her made him all the more anxious to get the gunplay over with, so he could take her on home.” –Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, Zeke and Ned, 1997   “DAWN CREEPS OVER MANHATTAN, PAINTING AVENGERS MANSION IN BLOODY HUES.  INSIDE, STRIDING PURPOSEFULLY DOWN A PLUSH-CARPETED HALL IS A LONE FIGURE…A QUIET, … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

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Great Moments in Literature

Dan Seeger

“I took a deep breath and told Arthur I wasn’t just somebody to fuck. ‘What did you think we were?’ he said. ‘A little family?’ He was getting into a lot of harder drugs — they made him say things he didn’t agree with a few minutes later. But they were still the things he said. That was the last time I felt betrayed by a man, I think. Afterward I expected it.” — Leslie Jamison, The Gin Closet, 2010 “THE POWER KNOWS NO DISTANCE! IT PROJECTS FOR MILES — TO THE CITY! TO A BUILDING — TO A WINDOW! AND … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature