TOM TOMORROW (born Dan Perkins) is best known for his weekly offering, "This Modern World," which appears in numerous papers as well as on Salon.com, but he also is the author of several cartoon anthologies. His latest, titled "The Future's So Bright I Can't Bear to Look," takes shots at Bush's second term and also looks forward to the post-Dubya era. You can join him at Politics & Prose for a low-key Friday evening to hear him talk about the book and get excited that the end of said administration is drawing near.
Express contributor Glenn Dixon spoke with Tomorrow; read it here.
» Politics & Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW; Fri., Oct. 3, 9 p.m., free; 202-364-1919. (Van Ness)
Photo courtesy of WNYC
LYNDA BARRY is that rare thing: a woman who's managed to make it in the world of comics. It's hard enough to come up against the comedy glass ceiling, but comic books are even more of a boys club than the Straight Talk Express. (Zing! Score one for Maureen Dowd and all women everywhere.)
Anyway, Lynda Barry has written "What It Is," a book about creativity that seeks to offer the average book reading American citizen a gateway to artistic and literary creativity. The book includes exercises, a "method" to reach your inner creative self and of course cartoons. lf Barry herself weren't so awesome, this kind of thing would be insipid.
Express contributor spoke to Barry; read it here.
» Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW; Fri., Oct. 3, 7 p.m., free; 202-364-1919. (Van Ness)
Photo courtesy Politics and Prose
IT IS A CLICHE, and too often a lie, to say that an artist repays endless contemplation. However, for the work of Lynda Barry, the hoary workhorse is wholly apt. (Barry will join fellow alt-comic star Tom Tomorrow at Politics & Prose on Friday)
Barry has several claims to fame, but is known best as the creator of the newspaper staple "Ernie Pook's Comeek." Her latest book, "What It Is," allows Barry to use a much bigger, more colorful canvas, offering a wealth of subtle visual details a newspaper strip can't match.
"What It Is" is a work of mixed media, fusing painting, portraiture, sketches, collage, text, narrative, comics, humor, creepiness, timeless wisdom and endless questions. The book switches between open-ended ruminations on the nature of creativity and art, and more familiar approximations of comics and graphic novels. As is often the case with Barry's work, her stories may seem highly personal and potentially embarrassing. However, in revealing essential oddness, the author strikes a universal chord.
Within days, Abu Marwa and his buddies in the Thunder cell had tracked down the Syrian [Al-Qaeda] gunmen. Within a couple of weeks, they devised an intricate ambush. In their beige Opel sedan, the Syrians regularly drove a desolate stretch of road. ... As soon as the Syrians pulled over, the insurgents shot them dead.AND SO IT GOES in Dexter Filkins' masterpiece of battlefield reporting, "The Forever War.""When my uncle was killed, I promised my aunt that I would avenge his death," he said. She had answered, Abu Marwa said, by repeating an Arabic saying that is often invoked and rarely acted upon: Ashrab min Dambum, I will drink their blood.
After they killed the Syrians, Abu Marwa took their kafiyas and brought them to his aunt, proof that revenge had been taken. She accepted them with gratitude. And then Abu Marwa presented her with a vial of the killers' blood.
"She drank the blood of the Syrians," Abu Marwa said, still seated in the couch, in the darkness.
Filkins, a New York Times correspondent, devotes sections of his book to vivid descriptions of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and downtown Manhattan in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The bulk of "War," though, takes place in Iraq, where Filkins effectively wields unvarnished, understated writing to convey an unceasing barrage of indelible scenes.
Filkins watches the looting of Baghdad, listens to "Hells Bells" with Marines as "bullets poured without direction and without end" in Fallujah, goes on the front lines with the Mahdi Army, races around the country with Ahmed Chalabi as he acts like a gangster chieftain, offers a long look at the intricacies of American reconstruction projects, goes inside failing children's hospitals and is repeatedly nearly car-bombed, kidnapped or torn apart by crowds.
As the excerpt above suggests, one can certainly see the seeds of the Sunni Awakening in "The Forever War," but one can also see just about anything one wishes in the horrific kaleidoscope, as the vignettes that comprise the book are contradictory and clashing — which is to say that they are balanced and ring of truth — and Filkins devotes a great deal of time to quoting both Iraqis and Americans who hold see the occupation positively as well as to those who make comments such as, "We will make the Americans leave this country on their knees. Just you watch."
Express spoke with Filkins, who will appear at Politics & Prose on Sept. 30, about his initial impressions of General Petraeus, embedding, the CPA and more.
Continue Reading "From the Battlegrounds: Dexter Filkins on 'The Forever War'" »
"ICARUS AT THE EDGE OF TIME" is a perfect book for smart parents to read to smart children. Plus, it will make all concerned even smarter.
"My goal was to try to communicate science in a way that mirrors that touches people at a more visceral, more emotional level," said celebrity physicist Brian Greene about his first work of fiction.
Greene's "Icarus at the Edge of Time" is a charming children's board book that includes priceless photos from the Hubble Telescope. It recasts the Icarus myth into the Space Age, with the titular protagonist yearning to spread his wings while trapped aboard a generational ship searching for life on a distant planet.
Continue Reading "Smart Science: Brian Greene on 'Icarus at the Edge of Time'" »
I FIRST DISCOVERED Francine Prose through her book "The Lives of the Muses," which is about the women who inspired famous artists and the changing role of the Muse in art. It's spectacularly good, an important read for anyone interested in the way art is created and in the inherent misogyny that's permeated the creative world since, you know, day one.
Now Prose has branched out with "Goldengrove," her new novel about a family grieving over the death of a daughter. Prose is a smart, lyrical writer and I'm sure it translates from non-fiction to fiction. She'll be reading at Politics & Prose tonight.
» Politics & Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW; Tues., Sept. 16, 7 p.m., free; 202-364-1919. (Van Ness)
Photo by Michael Williamson/The Washington Post
FRANCINE PROSE'S NEW novel, "Goldengrove," tells the story of Nico, a 13-year-old who is simultaneously coping with the sudden death of her older sister and the inevitable tumult that accompanies coming of age.
Unlike many writers adopting adolescent voices, Prose is no novice. She has published 11 previous novels, as well as short story collections, children's books and nonfiction on a wide range of topics. Despite her prolific past, Prose acknowledged several formidable challenges while writing her latest: coping with the real life grief that inspired "Goldengrove," finding the voice of her adolescent narrator, and living up to the standards she set for other writers in her 2006 book "Reading Like a Writer."
» EXPRESS: You have written young adult fiction in the past. How is writing about adolescents for adolescents different from writing about them for adult readers?
» PROSE: I think that the difference between writing for teenagers and adults is, you might say, hormonal — the presumption is that adults have more patience, and more experience; all the experience that has followed the experience of adolescence.
Continue Reading "Young, but Adult: Francine Prose on 'Goldengrove'" »
THE BASIC TENETS of Linn Ullmann's novel "A Blessed Child" seem plucked from her life story.
Ullmann is the daughter of legendary Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman and Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann, and her latest book is set in part on a fictional Swedish island, Hammarsö, to which the reclusive, brilliant and enigmatic father of three daughters with three mothers has retired.
Meanwhile, Bergman had nine children by many women and spent much of his life on the Swedish island of Fårö.
But Ullmann protests readers shouldn't try to conflate her life with her fiction.
"I am a fiction writer, I write novels, I make stuff up," Ullmann said in an e-mail. "I draw as little or as much upon personal experience as authors who do not have well-known parents. ... Hammarsö is a fictional island, inspired by Fårö where I have spent much of my life. Fårö is my landscape as much as New York is Woody Allen's landscape or Dublin is James Joyce's landscape."
Continue Reading "In Imperfect Harmony: Linn Ullmann on 'A Blessed Child'" »
THE CALIBER OF the bands at the unassuming venue known as Comet Ping Pong is hitting a high this weekend with the funky San Francisco outfit known as Tussle.
Their instrumental grooves make for pretty exceptional listening, with percussion, bass and electronics being the staples of their infectious beats. Even more exciting is their guest performer — D.C.'s own DJ Will Eastman. Eastman, who is known for putting a sexy spin on pop, will close out the evening with one of his powerful sets. The combination should be killer.
Express' Christopher Porter talked Comet and composing with Tussle's Nathan Burazer in this week's Weekend Pass. Read his story here.
» Comet Ping Pong, 5037 Connecticut ABe. NW; Sun., Sept. 14, 10 p.m., $10; 202-364-0404. (Van Ness)
Photo by Irja Elisa
EVER WANTED to know what was going on in Laura Bush's head? Luckily, there's a novelist for every subject, and Curtis Sittenfeld has written a thinly-veiled biography of the first lady in "American Wife," which tells the story of Alice Blackwell, otherwise known as Baura Lush, the demure wife of a bombastic U.S. president.
» Politics & Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW; Fri., Sept. 12, 7 p.m., free; 202-364-1919. (Van Ness)
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