John Russell Fearn's The Five Matchboxes does a lot of things rather well, but what's missing from the book are the things that move me from admiration to adoration. You see, TFM is a procedural, a subgenre of mystery fiction that emphasizes the realistic depiction of law enforcement methods and processes in solving a crime.… Continue reading The Five Matchboxes
Naked Lunch (1991) Burroughs explained the title Naked Lunch as, "A frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork." The naked lunch served up in Naked Lunch is the moment a man realizes he is homosexual, but married to a woman he half-despises and both of them are hooked to… Continue reading My favorite films of the 90s
Here is the current line-up for my collection of short stories: The Silent Steps of Murder -- which you can read here early and for free The Last Gaze -- a story about optography and the sins of the past and all that jazz. Where There's Smoke, There's Pazuzu -- honestly, it's the story of… Continue reading May ’24 Update
Jim Thompson is the antidote to all the fetid tastes of modernism. The Getaway is two-thirds detailed fallout from a caper and one-third descent into metaphorical hell. It shows a mastery of cause-and-effect tension for a long while, but then throws it all away for modes of expression that are directly antithetical to plot-based crime.… Continue reading The Getaway
8 1/2 (1963) It has become commonplace to call 8 1/2 the greatest film about filmmaking, but that's a disservice to Fellini's wildly imaginative rumination on creation. It's about all of us. It's about the moments we become so consumed by the past that the present disappears, the moments during writing/painting/masturbating when we lose all… Continue reading My favorite films of the 60s
James Scott Byrnside 