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Literary Arts
In a back room, in a quiet, upscale coffeehouse populated by students typing away at laptops, sit five poetry old-timers waiting for The Whole Note Poetry Series. This open mic series happens at The Beanery on College Avenue every other week. More
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Literary Arts
Discovery through a Roadtrip
Dissecting Eric B. Martin’s new novel challenges the reader in precisely the same way analyzing a good piece of drama does. Writer/director David Mamet’s take on this is that the bad play marginalizes the audience as “other” while the good play involves the audience as a participant by somehow creating empathy with the principal characters. Martin’s novel, The Virgin’s Guide to Mexico accomplishes this empathic strain. More
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Literary Arts
Taking over the World
On November 13th, Robert Greenwald's film The High Cost of Low Price will premiere in wide release on 3000 screens. This film about Wal-Mart's beleaguering effect on communities has been seducing people via the Internet to act as "field producers" and organize screenings and parties based on the film's intent. More
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Literary Arts
Sorrow Strikes Again
The author that brought the egocentric Generation X to its feet, if only for the short time it took to read the 128 loaded pages of Night, has graced the American landscape with another of his thought-provoking tales of misery. Elie Wiesel's new novel, The Time of the Uprooted tells of despair rooted in solitude and, unlike some of his past works, Wiesel strays from the loaded narrative. More
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Literary Arts
Minnesota Malaise Meets New York Neurosis
The ellipsis, in grammatical terms, is what English teachers would call an “unsaid thought.” For therapists, the ellipsis is their bread and butter. Once the patient fills in the ellipsis, the job is theoretically done. The Sorrows of an American by Siri Hustvedt creates a panorama of characters that suffer from ellipsis override. More
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Literary Arts
Beauty On Every Page
Peter Orner, from a Jewish family in Chicago, has written a novel about Namibia. And it's good -- so very good. Let me explain: too often, novels by American writers set in foreign countries either romanticize them or misunderstand those countries completely, or both. In these kind of works, the narrative feels off. Something is wrong, even if it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is. More
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Literary Arts
The welcome banner above host Jehanah Wedgwood's head reads Since 1974, The Finest Open Mike in the Bay Area -- an impressive claim that the Poetry Circle, Sacred Grounds's Wednesday night poetry event, seems to have pulled off with finesse. More
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Literary Arts
Defending Science Against A Rampaging Elephant
When Chris Mooney was a boy in the 70s his grandfather, a biologist, used to shake his head in disbelief at the transparent ruses of religious "creationists" who contrived attacks on the idea of evolution to insist that the earth was, as claimed in the Bible, only a few thousand years old. So-called "Creation scientists" would try to cast doubt on radioisotope dating, for example, or claim that evolution violated the second law of thermodynamics. More
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Literary Arts
A Challenging Mystery
One has to admire Guillermo Martinez for publishing his book, The Oxford Murders, in a time when the public will no doubt make comparisons to other titles. In this tale, a young Argentinean mathematician earns a fellowship to Oxford. During his first weeks there, he meets a few luminaries in his field, makes out with his tennis partner, and unluckily happens upon the dead body of his landlady. I can see the dialogue between the book clerk who has to describe this book to prospective customers. More
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Literary Arts
California Poetry and City of One
Past and present. Classic and modern. Forgotten and future. For a broad taste of California's poetry of the last 150 years and for the next 50, two books together are essential.
The first is California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present, a sweeping compendium of old favorites, lost gems and difficult decisions co-edited by Dana Gioia, Sonoma County resident and chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts. The second, City of One: Young Writers Speak to the World, commemorates the tenth anniversary of WritersCorps, an organization that fosters creative writing, arts and literacy among poor and at-risk youth. More
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