Category: Article

Nearing ninety, Herman Wouk is still churning them out. Well, not exactly. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Caine Mutiny, who went onto write such compulsively readable, middlebrow classics as Marjorie Morningstar, Winds of War, and War and Remembrance, apparently was doing his millennial homework during the ten years it took come up with his latest, A Hole in Texas. A brainy look at the intersection of politics, physics, and the mass media, it shows that the old man can still get around on the fastball.

A mystery writer of too many pen names to count (at least eight), we love Westlake best when he writes under the nom de crime Richard Stark. His series about the amoral and ruthlessly efficient thief named Parker is top of the line. But Westlake’s also a master of lighter stuff, and this month brings two books featuring his best comic creation, the sad-sack burglar John Dortmunder. Thieves’ Dozen collects all the Dortmunder short stories for the first time (all, ahem, eleven of them). Meanwhile, the new novel Road to Ruin has John and his crew out to steal a fleet of automobiles from a corrupt CEO—bringing a new meaning to the term “getaway car.”

Prince isn’t alone in taking a certain royal tint to heart. Alice Walker’s first and still most prominent novel, The Color Purple, earned her a well-deserved Pulitzer and a well-meaning film adaptation by Steven Spielberg. Later this year, it’ll debut as a musical in Atlanta before hitting Broadway. Her new novel, Now Is the Time To Open Your Heart, available April 20, has a successful-author protagonist who, in the throes of mid-life crisis, embarks on a spiritual quest involving Earth-motherhood and hallucinogenic-aided shamanism. Walker’s questing metaphysics in the Carlos Casteneda vein is sitting uneasily with the national lit-crit establishment, which seems to think that this time around it’s her prose that’s the color purple. 600 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis, (612) 339-4859, www.bordersstores.com

Let’s face it. One reason you like Byatt is because she’s so formidably smart, so unafraid to indulge her knowledge (or curiosity), that she makes you feel smart. Well, even if you won’t cop to that, we will. “The Stone Woman,” from her new collection, The Little Black Book of Stories (available April 20) had us spellbound when it ran last fall in the New Yorker. It’s a contemporary fairy tale involving a sixtyish Englishwoman whose flesh and insides gradually transform, through some perversion of alchemy, into stone, gems, and minerals; she absconds with a burly sculptor to the wild landscapes of his native Iceland. If Byatt reads like she writes, this promises to be a quietly ravishing evening. 2128 4th St. S., Minneapolis; (612) 624-2345

In a world where Dr. Seuss has his own postage stamp and the tales of Lemony Snicket provide some of the best reading for adults, not to mention kids, it only makes sense that the Loft would continue with its Festival of Children’s Literature. The third annual conclave will offer wannabes and already-theres classes and special sessions devoted solely to this burgeoning (and currently most interesting) branch of the publishing world. Meet editors and illustrators, stake out your competition, lift a glass of beer at informal discussions at nearby pubs, and—yes, at a writers’s gathering—actually have fun! 1011 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis; (612) 379-8999; www.openbookmn.org

Crossing the river on 35W the other day, we were reminded of the beauty of raptors. There, soaring above the traffic, was a bald eagle in all its unmistakable majesty. Alas, we could only enjoy it for a split second as we had to slam on the brakes to avoid another car, whose driver flashed us an entirely different bird. Thankfully, the Raptor Center opens its doors for its yearly open house, where we can get up close and personal with eagles, owls, hawks, and falcons without endangering our lives or theirs. Expert vets from the U of M will be there to introduce the Center’s winged residents and—bringing in some quadrupedal visitors—also give dog-obedience and horseback-riding demos. Admission is free. 1920 Fitch Ave., St. Paul; (612) 624-4745; www.raptor.cvm.umn.edu

One thing’s for sure, this’ll be the bloodiest film so far this year not starring Jesus. It’ll certainly be a lot more fun. Word is that the second half of Quentin Tarantino’s revenge thriller is a little heavier on spaghetti-Western homage than Vol. 1 was, but that’s not to say QT’s sheathed the Hong Kong-style swordplay. True, his glibness can be irritating, and the story here’s not exactly Shakespeare (well, maybe Titus Andronicus). Not to mention that delaying a theatrical release by two months often signals a ticking bomb. But we enjoyed the hell out of part one, and not even Go Go Yubari armed with that razorball thing will keep us from finding out how it all ends.

Ninety minutes into Lars Von Trier’s three-hour experimental drama, the painfully slow pacing had us so bored we nearly got up and left. That would have been a mistake. Staged with deliberate artificiality and an icy-bleak view of the human condition, Dogville is not easy to watch or to love. But this nightmare parallel to Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, inspired by Bertolt Brecht’s “Pirate Jenny,” comes with a powerful and uncompromising ending that had us talking for hours afterward. Von Trier fails in his apparent attempt to define a specifically American form of evil, but if you can stand a little face-to-face with grim existentialism, Dogville has real bite. Oak Street; 309 Oak St. S.E.; Minneapolis (612) 331-3134, mnfilmarts.org. Uptown; 2906 Hennepin Ave.; Minneapolis; (612) 925-6006; landmarktheatres.com
DVD

As the put-upon boss of the world’s worst detective once observed, “Give me ten men like Clouseau and I could destroy the world.” But of course, there’s only one man like Peter Sellers, despite the painful attempts of Ted Wass, Roberto Benigni, and Alan Arkin to make us forget that. (Prediction: Steve Martin’s upcoming remake won’t fare any better.) Inspector Clouseau belongs to Sellers the way the Little Tramp belongs to Chaplin. This six-disc set skips over the non-Sellers—and, alas, Return of the Pink Panther, to which MGM doesn’t hold rights. But what remains is pure comic gold.

While dry, subliminally caustic comedy is not exclusive to Brits (see Arrested Development, for one), this BBC sitcom is proof that England need not yield its national claim on deadpan, documentary-style sarcasm. This satire of the soul-deadening workplace won an unexpected two Golden Globes this year, including one for creator and star Ricky Gervais’ pompous middle manager David Brent, one of the finest fatuous idiots since Basil Fawlty. Catch the original now before the American version, a possible replacement for NBC’s Friends, debuts next year.