THERE’s a phrase of John Cage’s I think about once in a while, despite having radically mixed feelings about the man and his work. “Theater exists all around us,” he once wrote, “and it is the purpose of formal theaterto remind us this is so.” This notion came alive for me the other night as I caught one of the last performances of Invisible Cities, the wild-ass, Calvino-inspired opera that … [Read more...]
Lydia Millet vs. Domestic Realism
ONE of the key impulses of my generation -- what we used to call generation x -- has been the move away from old-school psychological realism into fiction's "borderlands." that's michael chabon's term, and he's generally talking about the wild frontier between literary fiction and fantasy, pulp crime, sci-fi, lovecraftian horror and comics. but lydia millet is less interested in those fan-boy … [Read more...]