Stewart Mitchell > Recent Status Updates

Currently rereading Slouching Towards Bethlehem and it’s such a treat to revisit these essays with much more cultural context than I had when I first read them years ago. “John Wayne: A Love Story” strikes me as particularly brilliant now that I recognize the man and understand what his career looked like at the time the piece was written.

Almost through with Run River, which is an incredible debut.

Dumb, funny, entertaining. I’ll read it quick so I don’t have to be seen carrying around anything with Kevin Spacey’s face on it.

Hilarious so far.

300+ pages of mediocre writing describing repetitious events takes its toll, but I’m still charmed by Hirsch at the end. He seems like a nice guy with a measured take on his very respectable body of work.

It’s incredible that the guy who edited Blow Out, which is the best film ever made about editing film, didn’t enjoy the story.

Hirsch isn’t a particularly good writer but I’m very interested in the stories he’s telling.

This is the DeLillo I remember loving in college.

After disliking the last 3 (4?) DeLillos I’ve read, I am (tentatively) enjoying this one so far. I forgot just how much I enjoy his dialogue when he’s in good form.

Brutally grim mood in the White House toward the end of Bush’s second term. Baker captures the fatigue well.

You feel the exhaustion of Bush’s second term at this point in the book. And you can’t help but wonder what Bush’s legacy would have been if not for the omnipresence of Iraq overshadowing everything else he tried to accomplish.