Propeller No. 13, Fall 2012: What Was Film?
A special section on film features Kate McCourt on Barbara Loden, Benjamin Craig on Woody Allen, Sarah Marshall on Linda Lovelace, and Dan DeWeese on New Hollywood. Patrick McGinty discusses dreams in fiction; Elizabeth Lopeman looks at Mucha. Patrick Somerville talks about This Bright River, Holly Laycock talks to Beth Robinson, and Elizabeth Lopeman chats with Dieter Amick. Marie Martin on robot puppets and chemotherapy, Paul Martone on his first vote, and Randon Billings Noble on the D.C. snipers. Reviews of Anna Keesey, Sheila Heti, and Gregory Martin. Poems from Emily Pettit, and a science-fiction letter from Benjamin Craig. Plus further reviews, columns, NFL picks, etc.
"What we often read isn't death but instead a character's reaction to it. This is, after all, how we experience death as living breathing human beings. If you've ever lost someone close to you, someone you've shared your life's moments with, what keeps you up at night is the not-knowing." By Patrick McGinty.
Notes on items from the world of books. Current contents: Sergio Chejfec's The Planets; Therese Bohman's Drowned.
"In talking about design, the answer is not going to come from yourself. You have to talk about it and reflect on it as a team to get the best answers." By Elizabeth Lopeman.
"I decided...that I would embrace something formally unusual and push back hard against the notion that drama could only be dramatic action, or that people doing things constituted the most crystalline, intense kind of energy a story could deliver." A Q&A with the author.
"The question in the back of my mind was always: Is this part true? Followed quickly by: Does it matter?" How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti. Review by Genevieve Hudson.
"Martin examines the past, piecing together his father's stories and his own stories in order to bravely confront the unspoken." Stories for Boys by Gregory Martin. Review by Sarah Seybold.
Photos of and by kids from the Doernbecher Children's Hospital Cancer and Blood Disorders Program, with contributions from patients and siblings. Article and project by Marie Martin.
On social responsibility, vampirism, and voting at age eight. By Paul Martone.
"There must be a way to remember the feeling I had those twenty-one autumn days: that I was a better woman for having those killers in and around my city, ready to shoot me every day of my life." By Randon Billings Noble.
"Living off of luck or bad luck depending on how you look at it. You look at it and look at it."
Beth Robinson on grief, synesthesia, and transcendence. A Q&A with the artist, by Holly Laycock.
"Esther Chambers finds herself settling into life among cattle ranchers, sheepherders, and a quickly escalating war over the scarcest resource: water." Little Century by Anna Keesey. Review by Benjamin Craig.
"I thought, Hey, an NFL game! But then I picked it up and looked at it and realized no, this isn't right--this is not good." By Pete Tothero.
"There are a lot of games this week that will be tough to pick, so I'm going to do what the pros do: signal my prognosticatory flailing by employing 'advanced metrics.'" By Pete Tothero.
"After the game everyone pees in the dirt and then complains about how someone untied and stole their horses." By Pete Tothero.
"These constructions in which I describe what I said and suggest a team's performance was somehow a response to that? They make me feel alive. They make me feel alive in a way that actual life does not." By Pete Tothero.
"Under the glow of their fan's adulation, by merit of music's curious transcendental qualities, their fat disappears.'" By Chloe Woida.
"...we know they literally are true. The advantage that gives the writer makes all the difference." By Emily Burns Morgan.
"If Furious was such a good role model, then why wasn't he a larger part of Tre's childhood?" By Jessica Machado.
"...who is incredibly flawed but beautifully human, and I thought, Yes, this is what fiction can do—what it should do." By Chelsea Bieker.
"You can rotate the holoplay viewing stage so you can catch any angle from really any position on the bed. Make sure..." By Benjamin Craig.
Thinking over the Robert Lowell line "Tamed by Miltown, we lie on Mother's bed." By Wendy Bourgeois.
