Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist
Both the book and the movie made me squee like a school girl. Which is to say: this is not my most dignified moment ever. Come to think of it, my other moments aren’t bursting at the seams with dignity...
View ArticleIn Which A Soldier Describes the Primary Act of War
It’s not the first man. It’s the second and third and fourth and fifth; and they all become that first man. And by the fiftieth, and at close range, they all become the same face. When you kill, you...
View ArticleParce Que Moi Je Rêve, Moi Je Ne Le Suis Pas
I don’t try to remember what happens in a book. All I ask of a book is to give me energy and courage to tell me there’s more to life than I can take, to remind me of the need to act. —Léolo
View ArticleWhat Is Conceded to Mankind
I do not know if in this letter, I have been able to express the fullness of my meaning. I know it is difficult to give concrete meaning to ideas and sensations which can only receive life through...
View ArticleMiyazaki’s Top Fifty Book Recommendations
From the exhibition at the Setagaya Literary Museum in Tokyo in honor of the 60th anniversary of the Iwanami boys’ books series. Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943) Il...
View ArticleChipper From The Start
I suffered from several indefinable illnesses and could never really decide whether I wanted to live at all. Deep down in my consciousness, I can recall my actual condition, the stench of my body’s...
View ArticleRefute Kant Using Pedantry and “Sadism”
If I were so inspired, I could challenge any one of my classmates to a debate on any of the daily lessons. I would call his name, he would stand up, I would announce my challenge and ask him a...
View ArticleFollowing From a Punch
Now you listen to me. While I will admit to a certain cynicism, the fact is that I am a naysayer and hatchetman in the fight against violence. I pride myself in taking a punch and I’ll gladly take...
View ArticleColeslaw For Everybody
FOX (Christopher Walken): We had a good day. X (Willem Dafoe): Yeah, we did. FOX: I wrote a haiku, you know, for the occasion. A dog… walks into a bar. He’s wearing a suit, shirt, and tie. He says to...
View ArticleRelentless Yet Ineffectual Toil
Someone to whom I most recently showed my glass beehive, with its movement like the main gear of a clock—someone who saw the constant agitation of the honeycomb, the mysterious, maddened commotion of...
View ArticleA Stone Dragon’s Head, or a Saint
There is an old story of how the cathedral of Chartres was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Then thousands of people came from all points of the compass, like a giant procession of ants,...
View ArticleResponsive Reconfiguration
Soon people will not be able to watch films like Theo Angelopoulos’s Ulysses’ Gaze or to read Henry James because they will not have the concentration to get from one interminable scene or sentence to...
View ArticleThe Film Is the Talking
A film should stand on its own. It’s absurd if a filmmaker needs to say what a film means in words. The world in the film is a created one, and people sometimes love going into that world. For them...
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