Category Archives: books/film

Metro v. Retro Jon Krakauer: On the "Everest" Film and Jon Krakauer's "Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town"

Posted on November 10, 2015 by williamjcobb

So last weekend I happened to see the new film Everest, which recapitulates many of the events in Jon Krakauer’s bestseller Into Thin Air (1997), about the disastrous year when 11 climbers died on Mount Everest, circa 1996—which has since … Continue reading →

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The Rise of Internet Fiction: Blending Reality and Fiction—Not Just Ghosts in the Machine

Posted on November 5, 2015 by williamjcobb

So when the internet first became accessible to a wide range of people, it wasn’t just corporations and commercial institutions that flooded the World Wide Web with their websites, advertising products and making their information publicly available. One of the … Continue reading →

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On William Gay's "Little Sister Death": a Novel That Puts the P in Posthumous

Posted on November 3, 2015 by williamjcobb

So I should begin by the admission that I’m a diehard William Gay fan, and have been for years, ever since reading his first novel—The Long Home (1999), which was edited/published by none other than my own editor, Greg Michalson—though … Continue reading →

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On Flying Rivers and Ghost Forests: A Visit to Mesa Verde

Posted on October 13, 2015 by williamjcobb

So I spent last weekend at Mesa Verde National Park—a bit west of Durango, Colorado, in the famous Four Corners region of the American Southwest—grokking with the spirits of our Native American ancestors, hiking through ancestral puebloan cliff dwellings, and … Continue reading →

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Gunfire in the Aspens: the Realities of Cabin Life in the Rockies, With an Appreciative Nod to Walter Kirn in the New York Times

Posted on September 16, 2015 by williamjcobb

So I read today’s piece by Walter Kirn in the New York Times about cabin life and its status as an eddy of the American Dream (“Cabins, the New American Dream,” found here) with some amusement and recognition: I live … Continue reading →

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On Kent Haruf's "Our Souls at Night": The Last Waltz in Holt, Colorado

Posted on May 13, 2015 by williamjcobb

So I felt a mixture of sadness and readerly pleasure upon opening Kent Haruf’s final, posthumous novel, Our Souls at Night, to be published by Knopf this month. I first encountered Haruf’s fiction in 1999, when I was assigned his … Continue reading →

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Chris Nolan's "Interstellar" as Half-Baked Cli-Fi, or What Does Matthew McConaughey Eat in Outer Space? Pretzel Ions?

Posted on April 5, 2015 by williamjcobb

So I must first confess I’ve never been seduced by the eye-candy of Christopher Nolan’s films: Yes, they’re imaginative, clever, outlandish and topical. I’m all for that. But at some point they tend to turn so “Hollywood” that you have … Continue reading →

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Review of Reif Larsen's "I Am Radar" in the Dallas Morning News

Posted on March 1, 2015 by williamjcobb

So I’ve neglected this lonely little blog so often I should seriously feel guilty, but . . . I have my reasons. Note that I say I should feel guilty. But I don’t. (Well, maybe just a tad scrap of guilt is swirling around the door … Continue reading →

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"Necrophilia, Anyone?" On the Horror-Show That Is James Franco's Film Adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's "Child of God"

Posted on December 7, 2014 by williamjcobb

So I’d heard that James Franco had made a film version of Cormac McCarthy’s powerful-and-disturbing novel Child of God (1974), and I casually wondered why I hadn’t heard anything about it. A year ago Franco also did a film version … Continue reading →

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On the Death of Kent Haruf: One of Our Finest Novelists, and a Friend

Posted on December 2, 2014 by williamjcobb

So on this snowy morning it’s a sad day to hear of the passing of Kent Haruf, author of Plainsong (1999), Eventide (2004), and Benediction (2013), among others. (For more details, see a piece in the Washington Post, here.) Although I … Continue reading →

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