Hrag Vartanian

A blog of art, culture, photography, writing and ideas.

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Entries Tagged as 'fiction'

Faster Hipster, Kill, Kill

April 24th, 2008 · No Comments

It was only a matter of time before hipster lit (hip-lit?) hit the bookstands with full force. Rayo Casablanca’s 6 Sick Hipsters is the latest entry to the genre and check out a review I came across (italics mine):
The premise of Casablanca’s 6 Sick Hipsters is enticing: someone is murdering those atrocious denizens of Williamsburg, [...]

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Tags: American · Brooklyn · New York · fiction · literary criticism · pop culture

Arthur Nersesian’s Alternate History of NYC

January 6th, 2008 · No Comments

I’ll admit it, Arthur Nersesian is one of my favorite writers. Not because he is the hoity-toity wordsmith Ian McEwan can be or the hipper-than-thou Douglas Coupland who seems to shit out bundles of well-phrased ideas, but because Nersesian crafts interesting stories with strong characters with fun to read prose that grapple with issues relevant [...]

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Tags: American · Armenian · New York · fiction · literary · literary criticism · pop culture

Some Things Never Change…like Democracy & War

December 24th, 2007 · No Comments

Most people know Joseph Heller for his WWII novel Catch-22 but his lesser known and more unconventional book Picture This deserves to be better know since it’s full of insightful nuggets of knowledge.
Using Rembrandt’s “Aristole Contemplating the Bust of Homer” (1653) as a springboard, Heller explores the golden ages of Amsterdam and Athens. Sure, it [...]

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Tags: American · New York · art · fiction · literary · photography

Colin Channer’s Golden New Novella

December 10th, 2007 · 1 Comment

Recently, I discovered the writing of Jamaican American writer Colin Channer during a bookreading at McNally Robinson on Prince Street. He read from his new novella, The Girl With The Golden Shoes published this year by Akashic Books. The writer has some prominent fans, including Russell Banks, who in his afterwood calls the book [...]

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Tags: fiction · literary · literary criticism · photography

Second Life Mates With YouTube

April 6th, 2007 · 1 Comment

It’s happened, Episode 1 of some new YouTube series has been posted and pushes some boundaries for online video. Here’s the premise & the first episode (04:48) of this minimovie:
…shot entirely in the popular online world Second Life…Filmmaker Douglas Gayeton came across a series of seven video dispatches by a character named Molotov Alva…a man [...]

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Tags: American · Second Life · art criticism · cinema · fiction