Thursday February 9th 2012

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I’m Psycho for this Book

Next year marks the 20th anniversary of its publication.  I think it's just about the greatest book to come out the last half of the century, American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.  It was published in 1991, but I didn't read it until '94.  I was a junior in high school when this divine novel graced my naughty, sweaty [...]

Joan Didion, the Memoir, and the Second Great Depression

Let me begin by stating that Joan Didion's 2005 memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, is almost unbearably brilliant. It won the National Book Award in November 2005 and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. In clipped, precise sentences, Didion describes the sudden death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and the harrowing grief she endured in the [...]

Review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

The Philadelphia Shakespeare Theater Directed by Carmen Khan (April 7 - May 9, 2010) Love can be dreamlike. One minute, it's sure as a compass; the next it's completely transformed into doubt and confusion. One minute, lovers feel lighthearted, skipping around the room as if clutching pink balloons; the next, lovers may feel bereft and [...]

The Music Snob Concept

In 1993 I worked at a summer camp.  I was only 15 and one of the youngest guys on staff, so I took a fair amount of abuse.  One night a few of us were gathered around a radio and someone slipped in a CD not worth remembering.  Possibly by Pantera.  I casually turned to the guy next to me — a bloated dude with a pony tail [...]

On Landscape Art

Does anyone ever talk about, or even notice landscape paintings anymore?  The kind hung in waiting rooms and middle class homes.  The snowy red barn.  The grey sea gull dipping over acrylic white crests.  The sweet sunrise over a lonely brown oak on a yellow prairie.  A mountain casting a dark shadow across a blue lake [...]

Welcome to the Wild Violet Blog

As part of the redesign, we're starting an arts blog. Regular contributors will share their thoughts about art, music, movies, writing, and more. We hope it will help create a virtual discussion about the arts and their place in our lives. If you are interested in becoming one of our bloggers, e-mail Wild Violet editor Alyce Wilson. Enjoy [...]