Category: Article

Sex. Drugs. Corruption. Misunderstanding. In her debut novel, Lindsay Ahl explores these themes through the eyes of 35-year-old Elena Monroe, a confused individual who has occasional cravings for grape juice. Elena stumbles through a web of the past and present, trying to work out her relationship with her mother. Ahl’s vague and ethereal writing style helps tremendously in creating Elena, who is so unreliable as a narrator that we don’t even trust the story to be over just because when we’ve run out of pages to read. Local imprint Coffee House Press published Desire, but that’s not the only Minnesotan connection. At one point, Elena drives through Minneapolis just in time to catch a Bob Dylan concert. (Available now)

Meticulous detail, natural poses, and—most startling—life-sized renderings made John James Audubon’s Birds of America a groundbreaking work in the formerly staid world of nineteenth-century ornithology. Today, William Souder’s biography of Audubon, Under a Wild Sky, paints the larger-than-life portrait of the man behind the famous illustrations, who was far more interesting than his role as the über-birdwatcher implies. Souder follows his subject, a “self-taught painter and self-anointed aristocrat,” as he travels from an illegitimate childhood in Haiti to the wilderness of Kentucky and elite scientific circles on the East Coast and in Europe. Souder peppers his rich prose with tangents on American history, natural history, and environmentalism, which should be no surprise coming from an author whose last book, A Plague of Frogs, chronicled Minnesota’s outbreak of frog deformities in the late nineties. Bound To Be Read, 870 Grand Ave., St. Paul; (651) 646-2665; www.boundtoberead.com. Valley Bookseller, 217 N. Main St., Stillwater; (651) 430-3385

Rock criticism has never mattered less, probably because it has never really evolved beyond the canon of its best, exhausted practitioners—Christgau, Marcus, and Meltzer. Whereas those old duffers should have grown up a long time ago, into broader social, political, even pop-cultural criticism—hell, how about a novel, guys?—they keep churning out increasingly remote ruminations and mostly just come off like cranks who have spent too much time in smoky bars with loud music and loose women and oversized mirrors. Which brings us to Klosterman, who deserves the attention he’s gotten for writing pop criticism that’s actually fun to read. His last book, just out in paperback, is Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. It’s a wild romp from Pam Anderson’s sex tapes to the decline of American newspapers, and shows just how free-wheeling and funny the male mind can be. Mary Lucia loves this guy, and so do we. (651) 699-0587; www.ruminator.com

With seminars on everything from poetry to quilting, along with teachers from such faraway places as Korea, the Split Rock Arts Program’s summer workshops at the University of Minnesota make for a tasty arts buffet. Each Tuesday brings a fresh set of writers reading and visual artists showing slides. This year’s teachers include local stars like poet Ray Gonzalez, painter Cheng Khee Chee, and novelist Sheila O’Connor, and visitors like Oregonian poet Dorianne Laux, Korean textile artist Chunghie Lee, and Californian children’s author/illustrator Gerald McDermott. An open reception follows each soiree, since we all know that tasty vittles and fine conversation make any arts event that much better. 300 Washington Ave. S.E., Minneapolis; (612) 625-6000; www.bookstore.umn.edu

They’ll be murdering, stealing, and backstabbing all month down at the Oak Street, which sounds like fun to us. July’s repertory slate is a good mix of the titles long recognized as noir royalty (Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, Chinatown) and enough lesser-known beauties to pique the interest of hardened criminophiles. Good bets include Burt Lancaster’s debut The Killers, the labyrinthine The Big Clock, and the Independence Day weekend’s trio of undeservedly overlooked Alan Ladd/Veronica Lake films. Rounding things out are a fistful of well-known 1990-era noirs all worth a second or even third look, among them David Lynch’s bizarre Blue Velvet, the Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing, and The Grifters, the twistedly Freudian adaptation of Jim Thompson’s novel starring John Cusack. (612) 331-3134; www.mnfilmarts.org

Fresh off his box-office success with School of Rock, director Richard Link-later’s returned to his low-key, high-concept indie roots. Sunset picks up on his 1995 romance Before Sunrise, catching up with the characters played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy nine years later. The two of them wander around Paris, talk, visit a coffeeshop, talk, go for a boat ride, talk, and talk, and talk, dancing around the question of whether they’re still in love. You needn’t have seen the earlier film to appreciate what Sunset offers. If you were taken with both My Dinner with Andre and Wings of Desire, this one’s for you. (612) 825-6006; www.landmarktheatres.com

After making a splash on the U.S. film-festival circuit (including our own local fest), this German documentary’s making a welcome solo return to arthouses. If you’re up for something in the vein of Winged Migration or The Saltmen of Tibet, don’t miss it this time around. It’s about a family of Mongolian camel-herders who face a crisis when its mama camel rejects her newborn. A cute-as-a-button boy named Ugna and his big brother travel to the big city (or what passes for such in Mongolia) to hire a violinist, apparently common practice in the Gobi Desert for soothing unmotherly camels. The cinema verite approach gives an intimate view of daily life in a culture that’s both strange and strangely familiar: Kids in Mongolia play games on the living-room rug too, but they use animal bones instead of Yahtzee dice. 3911 West 50th St., Edina, (952) 926-1621, landmarktheatres.com

The unavoidable compression needed to turn this medieval-monastery murder mystery into a two-hour film makes Jean-Jacques Annaud’s 1986 adaptation both less rich and less strange than Umberto Eco’s triumphal novel—and yet still, it’s a nearly perfect palimpsest, enjoyable both on its own terms and as an adjunct to the book. Annaud invests the film with a wonderfully creepy Gothic atmosphere, and his eccentric approach to casting pays off with a set of faces that are, well, terrifically eccentric. Rose was also a career-saver for Sean Connery, who was at the time considered so washed-up that the American backers pulled out of the film after he was cast. (Available July 6)

He’ll certainly never make a better film than Manhattan, especially considering his output in the last few years. But for pure entertainment, we’ll take Woody Allen as goofy joke-schlepper any day—the Woody in his New Yorker essays, his Standup Comic album, and his first half-dozen films, including this terrific 1969 mockumentary. His first full-fledged directorial effort is a daffy but deft sendup of gangster movies, loosely held together as a biography of incompetent robber Virgil Starkwell, whose poor penmanship turns his holdup note into “I have a gub,” and who argues with his wife about what shirt to wear during a bank heist. (“Beige is in poor taste,” he insists.) Sure, it’s lightweight, but it stole our hearts anyway. (Available July 6)

We’d have an easier job if Leo Kottke would stub his toe just once so we could qualify our praise. But our favorite picker has reduced us to fawning again with yet another masterpiece. As usual, his delightfully obtuse liner notes have virtually nothing to do with the content. What’s changed is that his cover tunes offer some of the best material. Horton Vaughn’s “Mockingbird Hill” will get folks hitting the repeat button repeatedly. Vocals will be found only in the Los Lobos collaboration, “The Banks of Marble,” a song that proves (again) that Kottke can make himself at home pretty much anywhere he pleases. (Available now)