Category: Article

Norah Labiner is in love with language. She writes in a great tidal wave of words, logophilia sometimes cresting into babble as she races to tell her story, then jumps back to pick up a detail dropped in the rush, then joyously forward again. Like her first novel, Our Sometime Sister , Miniatures is a multilayered, digressive rumination on writing as a simultaneous act of confession and obfuscation. It’s narrated by Fern Jacobi, a young expatriate who becomes housecleaner and confidante to Owen and Brigid Lieb, two writers haunted by the apparent suicide of Owen’s first wife, the very Sylvia Plath-like Franny. Labiner uses the crossing strands of narrative to explore the hidden connections between biography and fiction, truth and lies. Stylistically, she’s something of a Gen-X James Joyce, spinning a tale that’s intensely inward-looking and intimate in a roiling, rambling blend of soap-commercial ditties, lovelorn lamentations and literary jokes.

In his first memoir, All Over But the Shoutin’, Pulitzer-winning reporter Rick Bragg told of his mother’s triumphant struggle to raise three boys in the face of grinding poverty and an abusive, alcoholic husband. Ava’s Man , new to paperback, takes the story back a generation to chronicle his maternal grandfather, Charlie Bundrum, a carpenter and moonshiner who lived a life of stubborn independence and fierce family devotion in the hardscrabble foothills of Alabama and Georgia during the worst years of the Great Depression. Bragg frankly admits that he sees Charlie, who died the year before Bragg was born, as the heroic father figure he never had. But Ava’s Man is no hagiography. It’s a complex portrait of a man of many failings redeemed by his strength, selflessness, and love. He was illiterate but not ignorant, an inveterate drunk who worked hour after backbreaking hour to feed his children, who brawled constantly with the police and faced down a homicidal, shotgun-wielding neighbor. Bragg vividly recreates a backwoods culture now paved under highways and drowned under dams. These are the hillbillies usually parodied as The Simpsons’ Cletus the Slackjawed Yokel or demonized as the crude inbreeds of Deliverance . Bragg doesn’t hide the trash but gives his folk their own rough country dignity. Barnes & Noble in Galleria, Edina, (952) 920-0633

We’re pleased as punch that our friends over at The Loft and Utne Reader are in cahoots to produce this glossy new lit magazine, which premieres on the national newsstand at the end of the month. Actually, this nifty project secretly triangulates with Ruminator; Editor Bart Schneider was the man who put the Hungry Mind Review on the mental screen of anyone who cares about good books and fine reading, and it’s great news that he’s at the top of another winning masthead. Can a literary magazine that caters unapologetically to “readers and writers” survive in the shark-infested waters of glossy monthlies that look more and more like Sharper Image catalogs? It’s a question we ask ourselves all the time. And we look to the Utne as proof positive that there is still hope for the printed word, at home right here in the Twin Cities and abroad. Look for fine writing and razor-sharp wit from the likes of Nick Tosches, Sven Birkerts, Emily Carter, and many other masters of this ignoble art.

Church, Bierstadt, Kensett. These were the superstars of their era, painters already a part of our budding national mythology from the early 19th century. The 10 men who authored the 90-plus paintings here did as much to create the American sense of self as nearly any writer or political leader of the day. What they saw—and then translated to canvas—was to many nothing less than God’s declaration that this land was the culmination of his creation. An exhibit of a single frontier painting by Albert Bierstadt would have people lined up for blocks in New York. Whatever our attitude today about such grandeur—or grandiosity—these depictions of the landscape were certainly nothing less than inspired. Ironically, it took the Tate Gallery of Britain to pull together a show about America’s gilded age of landscape. Lucky for us, the result is perhaps the best exhibit of its kind in over 50 years. Call the MIA for tickets, but check out the Tate’s super-comprehensive website to learn more about the show. MIA (612) 870-3200

To mark its 50th anniversary, the Nature Conservancy commissioned a group of 12 diverse photographers to document areas which the Conservancy helps to protect and has deemed “The Last Great Places.” The show at the MMAA is a fine selection of about 50 pieces running concurrently to a larger exhibit also touring the country. Hope Sandrow created a breathtaking series of landscapes from the Komodo National Park in Indonesia. These lush photos juxtapose beautifully with the almost uncomfortable emptiness in David Misrach’s images of Pyramid Lake and the Lahontan Valley Wetlands of Nevada. Minneapolis native Lynn Davis is also part of the show with vast images of earth and sky from the Utah desert. Working with the Minnesota chapter of the Conservancy, the MMAA also organized a section “Minnesota’s Great Places,” highlighting regional sites shot by six photographers across state. MMAA, (651) 292-4355, www.mmaa.org

Why is the Lagoon Cinema our favorite theater? Because of the popcorn? No, it’s because they show movies like Sex and Lucia. This is an adult film in both senses of the word. It’s got plenty of steamy sex scenes. But even with those scenes—believe us—it’s not for the American Pie crowd. Lucia is the lover of Lorenzo, a novelist who has fathered a daughter during an earlier anonymous liaison on a Spanish island. While living with Lucia, Lorenzo discovers the child and becomes infatuated with her nanny. Something terrible happens while he’s with the nanny, and he commits suicide because of his guilt. Lucia retreats to the island she’s heard about and there learns the truth about Lorenzo, the nanny, and the mother of his child. Or, is the whole story really going on in the pages of the novel Lorenzo is writing? It doesn’t really matter, as the story is absorbing, but not entirely linear. As Lorenzo says about his novel, the story keeps leading you back to the middle, where you can go off in an entirely new direction at any time. It’s a labyrinth, but one in which you thoroughly enjoy losing yourself.

We hang our heads in shame for leading dear readers astray when we declared Death to Smoochy was Robin Williams’ triumphant escape from the touchy-feely pablum he starred in during most of the 90s. One reviewer declared that only an amazingly talented group of people could have made something that horrible. A month later, Williams’ creepy turn in Insomnia (with Al Pacino and Hilary Swank) was well-reviewed, but little-seen. In One Hour Photo , Williams plays Sy Parrish, who works the photo development counter at a SavMart. Sy goes virtually unnoticed by the patrons that surround him, so when wife and mother Nina Yorkin (Gladiator’s Connie Nielsen) actually acknowledges his existence, Sy becomes obsessed with her family, living vicariously through the photos she has developed at his counter. Williams, in white, thinning hair and oversized glasses, plays this simmering psycho with skillful aplomb. This could be the movie that helps Robin decide between more challenging, complex roles and Patch Adams II . Please help him decide. Seek out One Hour Photo for a quality case of the heeby-jeebies.

For a film festival with such a narrow focus, this weeklong exhibition of movies about music certainly covers a lot of ground. The third incarnation of “Sound Unseen” gathers more than three dozen films touching on reggae, punk, Islamic song, lesbian folk—well, you get the idea. The schedule’s especially packed with biographies, retrospectively cataloguing Sonic Youth, Femi Kuti, John Lee Hooker, dead Volkswagen pitchman Nick Drake, and bluegrass king Ralph Stanley, among others. Other worthwhile offerings find gold in the oddball fringes, like Irwin Chusid’s bizarre collection of “incorrect music videos,” or the Oscar-winning Thoth, a compelling look at a guy who writes sci-fi operas in a language of his own invention, and sings them for spare change while wandering the New York sidewalks in a loincloth. Trust us, it’s better than it sounds. Don’t miss Tribute , a hilarious and often downright weird expose of the subculture of cover bands, a world of titanic jealousies and artistic ambitions no less real just because the musicians pretend to be somebody else. Sound Unseen Festival (612) 379-0888, www.soundunseen.com

Reservoir Dogs made him the hipsters’ darling, but it was 1994’s Pulp Fiction that, for better or worse, anointed Quentin Tarantino as The New Genius Who Will Change Moviemaking Forever. Nobody, of course, can stand up to that level of hype, and QT certainly later proved himself capable of graceless junk. (Exhibit A: Four Rooms.) But, y’know, it’s not going too far to say that Pulp Fiction’s influence shows up in many good (and bad) crime films made since. Sure, it has faults. The flashy editing and then-radical nonlinear chronology mask a certain superficiality. It’s convinced of its own cleverness, and rings hollow when dealing with questions of morality. It also brought John Travolta back from obscurity, and thus is directly responsible for Battlefield Earth . Still, it’s brilliant and stylish storytelling, and as far-reaching in its way as Citizen Kane.

Jack Nicholson has certainly confirmed many times over his place as a master of the big screen. Who can forget his classic role as Jack Torrance in The Shining, or more recently his deft and hilarious portrayal of neurotic Melvin Udall in As Good as It Gets? Still, we think this is by far his finest performance—as angry young man, slacker sweetheart, and harmless delinquent Randle McMurphy, who tries to parlay a petty sentence at the workhouse into a stay on Easy Street at a mental institution. (Things turn out much worse than expected.) Of course, Nicholson had fine material to work with. It was Ken Kesey’s first novel—the outstanding book that established him as a cultural poobah years before he convened the Merry Pranksters and turned them all onto a little-known drug called LSD. Anyway, one of the reasons we keep on eye on DVD releases is to take notice of great moments in film, and to generate an excuse for you to run out and tag up on films that have taken their place in the canon of great American art. This is one of them.