Instant classics

John Grabowski — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:00:45 +0000

In 1851 a novel by an obscure American made its quiet debut. It did not turn out to be a best-seller. Exactly 40 years later, after the death of its author, the New York Times stated, “There has died and been buried in this city, during the current week…a man who is so little-known even by [...]

Awards time

John Grabowski — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:51:46 +0000

Welsey Shaw has never won an Academy Award. The consensus is she’s too young (27) for one. She has won just about every other honor out there. I even had a mention of a trophy shelf in her apartment with a stand in the center marked by the words “reserved for future Oscar.” But I [...]

Person to Celebrity

John Grabowski — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 06:59:33 +0000

UPDATE: Apparently most people didn’t like Person To Person 2.0. The show landed CBS firmly in third place, and got tepid reviews. CBS revived its legendary program Person to Person last night, and I was curious to see if they could pull it off. The short answer is no. Person to Person, for those who don’t know [...]

The sun also sets

John Grabowski — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 09:12:46 +0000

I saw this picture recently and started wondering, as I always do when I see pictures like this: who has/had it better? Here’s Earnest Hemingway and friends, sitting in a cafe in Pamplona, Spain, where the bulls run. This was around the time he was writing The Sun Also Rises. This is every modern fiction [...]

Demi down

John Grabowski — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:10:46 +0000

Demi

“What’s it about???”

John Grabowski — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:49:02 +0000

I hate this question. And everybody asks it. “What’s your novel about?” I hate it because I don’t know how to answer it. They don’t know it, but what they really mean is, “What’s the plot?” They also, without necessarily realizing it consciously, mean, “What’s the genre?” Both of these annoy me, because I think [...]