Author Archives: williamjcobb

Neil Labute is an eviscerating playwright, screenwriter, and now, director, who makes squirmy films that are hard to ignore or look away from. Usually they present the dark side of male bonding and distrust of women, as in In the … Continue reading →

This has to be No. 1 in some weird category of Books I Like But Have Not Read. I’ve mentioned it before: Steve Hely’s satiric/comic novel, How I Became a Famous Novelist, which came out this summer, and it sounds … Continue reading →

So this weekend I read Nick Reding’s Methland, a nonfiction book about the effects of the crystal meth “epidemic” on America (this is harped on too much) and in particular, on the town of Oelwein, Iowa. In part I read … Continue reading →

So being the father of a two-year-old, it took me a while to watch the based-on-a-true-story Changeling (2008)—a star turn for Angelina Jolie (whom I sympathize with; she seems like a kind mom, even if she is a Hollywood brat, … Continue reading →

So there’s a minidebate in the NY Times this week about nonfiction writers writing about family, the painful and embarrassing moments. It arises from a book published in the U.K. and recently in the U.S., Julie Myerson’s The Lost Child, … Continue reading →

Here’s a gem from Sunday’s NY Times “Inside the List” piece in the Book Review: HARRY POTTER, YEAR ZERO: Speaking of Harry, here are the 10 titles grown-ups were reading when “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” the first book … Continue reading →

So I’m reading the NY Times this morning and encounter a head-in-the-sand scolding the notion of Peak Oil here: www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/opinion/25lynch.html I’ve read much about this idea and some of it includes (hopefully) laughable doomsday scenarios, and some of it seems … Continue reading →

I wrote the following as a request for a former student, to be posted on the Southeast Review’s webpage: Mystery in Storytelling One of the tricks in story telling—and believe me, there’s a hundred tricks that the best writers use … Continue reading →

So I noticed this little gem this morning, in Newsweek, an article titled “Isolation Increases in U.S.” (www.newsweek.com/id/213088) Here’s a quote from it: “Social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace may provide people with a false sense of connection that ultimately … Continue reading →

After about two weeks of traveling, which included visiting family in St. Louis, I’m back in Pennsylvania, house painting, breathing a sigh that I have DirecTV again. The various motels we slept in while crossing the Heartland all seemed to … Continue reading →