Junot Diaz’s debut collection of short stories, Drown, appeared ten years ago and drew the kind of attention usually reserved for writers with more established résumés. A big part of that was the cool intensity of the prose, which chronicled the lives of adolescent boys living in hardscrabble communities in the Dominican Republic, or transplanted … Read more
Denis Johnson’s new novel — his first in nine years — continues the author’s studies of sympathy and redemption as integral parts of human physiology. Still, as in most of Johnson’s work, a feeling of desolation pervades. Set in the ’60s, each segment of Tree of Smoke: A Novel follows a year in the lives … Read more
There is Shakespearean language, with its grand soliloquies and sonnets. And then there is the language of David Mamet, who made his name by elevating everyday speech into an art form. This fall, The Jungle Theater brings those trademark machine-gun sentences, stutters, and profanities to the stage with Speed-the-Plow. . Jungle Artistic Director Bain Boehlke … Read more
Though she loves classics, Diane Paulus has a penchant for finding inspiration in the more theatrical aspects of pop culture. The New York City-based director recently staged Turandot in a professional wrestling ring, but she’s better known for her production of The Donkey Show, a disco adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. So it’s not … Read more
If you happen to be wandering near the Walker some evening this month, do not be alarmed if you’re accosted by a young European wielding a video camera. This is merely part of the “War on Anonymity” waged by the Gob Squad, a performance art troupe whose members hail from the U.K. and Germany. One … Read more
The always irreverent and ever-theatrical indie-rock band Fort Wilson Riot created this five-part “indie-rock opera” (and album) about a nameless American journalist and his adventures in a mysterious foreign land. Enlisting the help of Jeremey Catterton, a stage director and friend from the University of Minnesota who now resides in London, the band has cobbled … Read more
After making a pissy comment about Ann’s Ashland Wi.article I would like to thank her for the wonderful review of Milda’s Cafe. It was one of the best things I have ever read in your webzine. Hats off to a great writer and magazine! Author(s) and Location: Dan Collins, Eau Claire, Wisconsin
While we in Minnesota were asleep at the bridge, we didn’t notice that people concerned for a free Tibet traveled to China and hung a banner on the Great Wall. These protesters (one of whom was from the Twin Cities) spent 36 hours in detention before being deported. Talk about missing a story. This was … Read more
When we entertain at home, we take for granted that we all partake in the same dishes, prepared in portions large enough to share. So isn’t it a bit odd, in this age of dining out as entertainment, for friends to gather at a restaurant and each order a different meal? It’s a very American … Read more
In the introduction to his comprehensive history of Rome, Livy invited his readers to “trace the process of our moral decline, to watch, first, the sinking of the foundations of morality … then the rapidly increasing disintegration, then the final collapse of the whole edifice, and the dark dawning of our modern day when we … Read more