February 2013
1 post
August 2012: In the beginning...
FEATURED THIS MONTH:
Andy Scott
The Nerdistry of Nicholas Clegg Simon Pegg (Part 1)
Simon Pegg (Part 2)
Eric Meckley
Dreams Past, Dreams Future: On Steve Erickson’s Obama Novel
Thomas Breedlove
America’s Forgotten Man of Letters: An Appreciation of Robert Penn Warren
Blake Daniel & Eric Meckley
A Conversation: The Illustrated Man (Part 1)
Blake Daniel
On Bradbury...
September 2012
1 post
1 tag
UNDER CONSTURCTION
This site is currently being worked over… stay tuned for details.
August 2012
2 posts
3 tags
On Bradbury and Good Writing
by Blake J. Daniel
Ray Bradbury begins his last-published essay, a piece in The New Yorker (June, 2012), with these words: “When I was seven or eight years old, I began to read the science-fiction magazines that were brought by guests into my grandparents’ boarding house in Waukegan, Illinois.”
It’s telling that the late science-fiction author, who would have turned 92 this year, began an essay...
5 tags
Simon Pegg Pt. 2
by Andy Scott
Part II: An Examination of Spaced and Paul
If Benji Dunn was the first of Simon Pegg’s characters to inhabit my consciousness, then Tim Bisley is perhaps the closest of all Pegg’s characters to a personification of my own repressed and pseudo-nerd psyche. Tim is the slacker comic book artist from the short-lived TV series Spaced, Pegg’s first foray into mainstream British...
July 2012
4 posts
7 tags
Considering Simon Pegg (Part 1)
by Andy Scott
A Review of Nerd Do Well [1]
Simon Pegg first came into my consciousness as Benji Dunn, the nerdy-capable tech whiz who aids and abets Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible series. Playing a lovable, dweeby scamp who shies away from violence in favor of technological trickery, Pegg navigated his way into my heart. And that was before he gave me zombies. Benji is an...
7 tags
Dreams Past, Dreams Future: On Steve Erickson's...
by Eric Meckley
On November 4th, 2008 I was in my apartment in Evanston, Illinois. As far as I remember, I wasn’t watching the results of the Presidential Election. Whether I was paying any attention or not, the events of the night made little or no lasting impression on me. What took place that night hangs no more vibrantly in my mind than the facts I learned about the Whiskey Rebellion in...
6 tags
Robert Penn Warren: An Overdue Appreciation
by Thomas Breedlove
(I should note here, on the outset, that this is not a real book review. There are a number of good and bad reviews of the book already available, including the New York Times 1946 review.)
There are really only two reasons to write a review of a National Book Award winning novel published in 1946. One is to celebrate the author. The other is to ask why we’ve stopped reading...
7 tags
A Conversation: The Illustrated Man (Part 1)
by Blake Daniel & Eric Meckley
In this, the first of our monthly conversations, we discuss the late Ray Bradbury’s masterful short story collection The Illustrated Man. Blake & I set out to cover the book in one sitting, but discovered we just had too much to talk about… So, this will be the first part of a conversation carried on throughout the month of August. Click...
