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  London Fields by Martin Amis It is the last year of the second millennium, and the city of London is gearing up for the grand finale. The rest of the planet is also preparing for this very special occasion: everywhere, the air is full of dread. The totality of the abuse humankind has visited upon the earth has generated a bizarre, never-before-seen environmental phenomenon that seems poised to unleash an extinction-level event. That is, if massive numbers of nuclear warheads aren't launched first. Elsewhere, the president's wife has been stricken with some unnamed malady and lies near death in a medical facility, giving apprehensive Londoners just one more thing to bang their heads about. Concern over the latter seems disproportionate (not to mention absurd) given the dire circumstances facing the world but the first lady's health holds front and center in the tabloid headlines. Which may not be a bad thing. With their attention directed away from the destruction at hand...
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 Cleanness by Garth Greenwell As the streets of Sofia teem with protestors of the regressive Bulgarian government, an American literature teacher (and aspiring author) reflects on his time in the city as he prepares to leave his post of seven years. In Garth Greenwell's follow-up to his 2016 classic,  What Belongs to You ,  Cleanness  further explores the experiences of a young gay educator who finds himself emotionally adrift in the decaying European capital. Filled with romantic longing and sexual thirst,  Cleanness  is, at its core, an affecting account of one man's yearning for connection. In the book's 9 chapters, each of which functions as its own short story, the unnamed narrator recalls specific individuals and occasions that have profoundly impacted his life. Intense love affairs, emotional scars and an uncertain sense of self both inhibit and empower his journey, as his past consistently circles around to link with the present.  The book's fi...
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Cult Movies #7 A 1971 black comedy centered around the budding romance between a 20-year-old man and 79-year-old woman may not be at the top of your must-see list, but it should be. Filmed in the San Francisco Bay Area when the turbulence of the sixties was winding down into the Me Decade , Harold and Maude embraces the idiosyncrasies of the peace-and-love generation with charmingly off-kilter performances and an anti-authoritarian bent. (It's the polar opposite of Don Siegel's  Dirty Harry -- starring Clint Eastwood--which was released the same year.)  Bud Cort is perfectly cast as Harold Chasen, a gawky, blank-faced young man who lives in an enormous mansion with his uptight socialite mother (a haughtily funny Vivian Pickles). While Mrs. Chasen schemes to normalize her odd and introverted son by subscribing him to a computer-dating service, Harold attends the funerals of strangers to occupy his time. That is when he's not staging elaborate suicide  tableaux  to ma...
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Weapons   ( Spoilers ahead ) In the suburban Pennsylvania town of Maybrook lives a group of troubled people who make really bad choices and wind up paying the consequences. They are not good neighbors and would seem to have no common cause to unite them, other than the regular school activities of their precious darlings. And therein lies the premise of Weapons , Zach Cregger's second feature following on the heels of his 2022 horror debut,  Barbarian (which we'll talk about in another post because I've yet to see it).  At the witching hour of 2:17 a.m., a class of 17 third graders arise from their beds and flee their homes, running through the misty streets, heeding the call of some mysterious force pulling them towards a destination unknown. The plot of Weapons unfolds via a Rashomon -like script, featuring chapters depicting the same events as experienced by different characters.  Chapter One, titled "Justine", introduces us to the third grade teacher whose ...
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Cult movies # 6 Unless you have a passing familiarity with the Beat Generation , it's possible that you have never heard of William S. Burroughs . Burroughs, a scion of the Burroughs Business Machines empire, was one of the Beat's co-founders, and a hugely influential author of subversive, postmodern literature. As early as 1957-58, what eventually became  The Naked Lunch  had already raised eyebrows after excerpts were published in two American magazines and immediately confiscated by postal authorities.  Burroughs's book, The Naked Lunch , was published by Olympia Press in Paris in 1959, and made its American debut in 1962 when Grove Press unleashed the "obscenity" on a nation that was, in many ways, still comfortably entrenched in the conservative conformity of the Eisenhower years. Once again, the postal service officials went to work, and  The Naked Lunch  was soon infamously banned in both Boston and Los Angeles. The L.A. ban was eventually lifted in 1...
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