Back in 1997, novelist David Foster Wallace reviewed John Updike’s latest for the New York Observer under a headline that asked, “Is This Finally the End for Magnificent Narcissists?” In his review — later republished as an essay — Wallace coined the term Great Male Narcissist (G.M.N.) for writers such as Updike and Philip Roth, explaining,... Read more

Watching Joel and Ethan Coen’s latest film reminded me of Franz Kafka’s story “Before the Law,” which appears in The Trial. A man travels to the door of the Law and asks for admittance, but a guard bars his way. After years of fruitless waiting, hoping and scheming outside the door, the man, on the brink of death, asks the guard why he’s never seen anyone else — doesn’t everyone seek the Law?... Read more

One day while walking in the Northeast Kingdom, Meredith Holch noticed one of her dairy farmer neighbors was building a new barn. “A light went off in my head, and I thought, Oh, they must be getting migrant workers,” recalls Holch. She looked out for the workers on her daily walks for several months, but never saw any. Then an ESL teacher of her acquaintance confirmed that the farm had been employing migrants for a year and a half.... Read more

Richard Matheson’s story “Button, Button” takes five minutes to read and has the cruel efficiency of a fable that sticks with you for a lifetime. Writer-director Richard Kelly’s adaptation, The Box, takes nearly two hours to watch. But by the end, all you’re likely to remember are a few scenes that have the non-sequitur quality of a dream.... Read more

Last January in this space, we reported on Cambridge resident Christine Sullivan’s self-published book 44 Days Out of Kandahar, which told the story of her desperate search for a puppy lost halfway around the world. Sullivan’s Navy reservist brother, Mark Feffer, had befriended the flop-eared red mutt named Cinnamon in Afghanistan, but circumstances derailed his plan to bring her back to his Annapolis home.... Read more

Scientific studies have told us two things about optimists. First, they’re more apt to delude themselves than pessimists. Second, they’re also more likely to succeed.... Read more

Seen enough Saw sequels? For horror fans, this Halloween weekend offers some alternatives to the standard big-screen fear-mongering. On Thursday, the Firehouse Center For the Visual Arts kicks off a weekly series of David Cronenberg screenings with Videodrome, the 1983 conceptual chiller that gave cinema the indelible image of James Woods popping a VHS tape into his abdomen ... and playing it.... Read more

About halfway through Paranormal Activity, a twentysomething guy (Micah Sloat) who’s investigating weird happenings that scare his live-in girlfriend (Katie Featherston), decides to ask the possible supernatural culprit why it’s being so coy. “Hey,” he yells, “we haven’t had anything interesting happen for a while!”... Read more

Sure, figure skating is pretty. It’s also merciless. A year of top-flight coaching and competition costs more than a year at most colleges, and a bad evening can send the value of that investment plunging. “Three and a half minutes and it’s over,” says coach Carol Heiss Jenkins in Christine Brennan’s 1996 book Inside Edge.... Read more

A few years ago, you wouldn’t have gone to the Vermont International Film Festival expecting to see Troll 2, a hilariously inept “horror” film from 1990, and a documentary exploring its status as the Best Worst Movie. Or The House of the Devil, a campy-looking satanic scarefest.... Read more