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This movie appears primed to be summer’s guiltiest pleasure: A sleek, sexy shoot-’em-up starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who are, as you read this, undoubtedly having lots of naked fun in some exotic, far-flung location. But you’ll have to read more about that in some other publication. Back to the movie, in which the … Read more

Clowes made the rare transition from favorite doodler of nerdy underdogs everywhere to Hollywood inspiration, when the movie adapted from his Ghost World graphic novel become a cult hit. The Oscar nomination he won for its screenplay hasn’t convinced him to mainstream his talents, however. In Ice Haven he continues to chronicle the idiocies and … Read more

Lauren Slater’ 2004 book, Opening Skinner’s Box, raised a storm when she wrote about the experiments neobehaviorist B.F. Skinner ran on his infant daughter by confining her in a box. Deborah Skinner herself rose from the annals of science to defend her father and condemn Slater. In Blue Beyond Blue, Slater moves into the fiction … Read more

Specimen Days spans hundreds of years, from the Industrial Revolution to a post-apocalyptic world (you can decide how far in the future that is). It’s filled with ghosts, terrorists, neurotics, aliens, adolescent prophets, and artificial humans. This all might sound more like Neil Gaiman rewriting the Left Behind series than classic Cunningham, but if Specimen … Read more

Wisconsin writer C.J. Hribal explores post-World War II America through the activities of one family in his new novel, The Company Car. The story begins in 1952, with a couple getting married on It’s Your Wedding, a television show in Chicago. As the next fifty years unfold, they get taken for a ride by forces … Read more

Forget cops and firemen; the bravest and most pitiable public servants we know are the teachers. It takes guts to face a roomful of kids these days. The neglected ones are prone to kicking. The coddled ones are prone to calling in their parents to change a grade or a rule. And the crazy ones? … Read more

Every time I sit down to write this column, I have to abandon my first five ideas for fear that I will hurt someone’s feelings. I don’t write fiction and I’m not clever enough to disguise people’s identities. I know a boatload of freaks, and sometimes I wish I could tell you all about them. … Read more

Vultures are watching you eat? If you’re not picnicking near a fragrant deer carcass, then you must be dining at Hell’s Kitchen in downtown Minneapolis. This breakfast-and-lunch spot is known for its red walls, devilish Ralph Steadman artwork, stuffed vulture mascots, and divinely fluffy yet tart lemon-ricotta pancakes. Those pancakes will remain on the new … Read more

Paul Auster (pictured) is the kind of poet they don’t make anymore: sexy in a dark-eyed Cary Grant kind of way, vaguely mysterious, and someone who actually makes a living by writing. Not by writing poems, of course–he’s best known as a novelist (and the writer of screenplays including Blue, with Wayne Wang). But for … Read more