Letters @ 3AM

Jo Carol Pierce's music says: Go the distance, baby, and find out – find you

"...for yourself if he ain't fantastic) cut red paper into a heart and wrote upon it: "Love Is a..."

March 14, 2008 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

Two words have been missing in all the hubbub about the Supreme Court's Lawrence v. Texas decision striking down laws against homosexual sodomy: Thank you.

"...In all the hubbub about Lawrence v. Texas -- editorials, op-eds, talking heads, Net reports -- there were two..."

July 11, 2003 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM: So Big Deal, Hemingway

Will Huck Finn be a valuable and immortal American archetype in the future?

"...a sentence that is so silly you just have to walk away from it and not look back...."

July 25, 2014 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM: The Nameless Moon, Etc.

Ventura unpacks his folders full of sentences without homes, and other remnants excised from this and that

"...I save what's worth saving and empty the manilas onto this page...."

May 16, 2014 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

'A brilliant cascade of cause and effect' can describe my life

"...that, something else, for which I have no name, took over...."

May 22, 2009 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

Our Ecstatic Days' is that rarest of creatures: a great novel. The first great American novel of the 21st century. Steve Erickson has discovered the secret of creating a novel that is not a book but an organism. Proust did it. Joyce almost did it. Faulkner sometimes did it. Marquez did it. Yes, that's the company Steve's keeping in Our Ecstatic Days.'

"...Twenty years ago the woman I was married to intercepted a review copy I'd received of a new..."

March 4, 2005 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

This month celebrates the 400th anniversary of Cervantes' 'Don Quixote,' the first great novel of Western literature and the most prophetic, in which deconstruction, postmodernism, and literary theory wind up bumping into one another and falling down hard

"...confused multitudes by inventing an abstruse vocabulary that pretended to discover what actually is an ancient concept: paradox. Derrida's..."

Jan. 7, 2005 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

The institution of marriage has been undone by the changes brought about by modern technology and therefore has nothing to fear from the legalization of gay marriages.

"...all, only doing what you're doing and only wish to enjoy what you claim to enjoy? Say you're a..."

Nov. 28, 2003 Column by Michael Ventura

Homage to a Road

"...illustration by Jason Stout In the music of the Southwest, one image is..."

March 19, 1999 Column by Michael Ventura

Vision 2020: Austin Books We're Looking Forward to in the New Year

Some local writers' books due out in 2020 we're eager to read

"...Emily Beyda was a faithful contributor to the Chronicle's Food section for three years –..."

Jan. 9, 2020 Arts Post by Robert Faires

Letters at 3AM: The Second Story

Remembering the cowardice and dysfunction of the White House on 9 / 11

"...2001) opened with this: "The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Time, and Newsweek agree the first plane hit at..."

Sept. 9, 2011 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters @ 3AM

These Lubbock friends of mine were always writing books – thick notebooks of drawings and words

"...I'd just moved back to the Texas panhandle when the documentary Lubbock Lights screened..."

March 16, 2007 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

Our country's newest immigrant generation is no longer learning that this nation will belong to them

"...It is no news to anyone that the fundamental nature of this country is..."

July 9, 2004 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

McGuffey's Readers helped establish American education as we know it (or knew it).

"...was purchased for only six dollars in an odds-and-ends store in Los Angeles. Its cover was water-damaged and faded,..."

April 27, 2001 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

The stakes were suddenly higher. There was more possibility in the night and in their lives than they'd yet considered. The work of art itself gave them the energy to fulfill its expectations...

"...TV channels. Foreign cinema and "art films" were known to Jane only by excited rumors spread by friends who'd..."

Sept. 3, 1999 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM: A View From the St. James Hotel

The St. James: It's an infirmary, it's a morgue, and it's a hotel where we each share a room with the dead

"...singing, "My mind is like a rowboat on the stormy sea/It's with me right now/In the morning, where will..."

May 18, 2012 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM: Created He Them

From Miss Universe to the military, gender roles don't mean what they used to

"...Jenna Talackova, 23 years old, took it for granted that a transgender beauty like herself..."

April 20, 2012 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM: Jesus Walking the Panhandle

The Christian cross is a question mark

"...the cattle drives on their way from West Texas to the Kansas railhead at Dodge City. (Growing up on..."

Aug. 13, 2010 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters From the Women of SAFPF

A small sample of the letters received by Austin attorney Derek Howard; transcribed and minimally edited

"...In early 2008, Jodi Stodder-Caldwell, an inmate at the Ellen Halbert SAFPF unit in..."

Dec. 12, 2008 News Feature

Letters @ 3AM

The federal government benefits from undocumented workers, therefore something is owed those workers in return: justice

"...Two facts tower above all others regarding U.S. immigration. The first foretells..."

May 26, 2006 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

Thoughts on the war's explosions of bombs, dreams, and preconceptions.

"...On a conundrum: To pretend coherence at this incoherent moment in history ......"

April 4, 2003 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

Michael Ventura reflects on the gateway of Time.

"...been obsessing me lately. "Just a raindrop in a storm," I keep telling myself. "I'm just a raindrop in..."

Oct. 27, 2000 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters At 3AM: Karen Holden's This Music

This Music, Karen Holden's new poetry collection, expresses the connection between the self and the world

"...meld of purist and demotic Greek, obsessed by ancient history, and unabashedly sensual, Cavafy produced just a few poems..."

Sept. 5, 2014 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM: The Bad and the Beautiful

Film noir cuts through the cant of America's idealism

"...had not driven that road, but I knew that town...."

May 20, 2011 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3am

Everyone knows there's something extraordinary in the air, and everyone wants it to mean what they want it to mean

"...there's something extraordinary in the air. Everyone wants it to mean what they want it to mean. But when..."

Jan. 16, 2009 Column by Michael Ventura

It Is Pathetic to Watch

"...Dear Editor, Re: "Letters @ 3am" [July 18]: It is factually..."

July 18, 2008 Postmarks

Letters @ 3AM

Cyberspace is nowhere and everywhere, a place where the articles on www.michaelventura.org hover and hang, nailed to a virtual wall like paintings in a museum

"...while back John called and asked that I contribute to "our tombstone." I said, "What?" He said something about..."

May 9, 2008 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters @ 3AM

The United States failed because its people overvalued their ideals and undervalued their resources

"...Subhead: Ironies of Idealism and Identity as Relates to the "Wiggins Aphorism."..."

Oct. 26, 2007 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters @ 3AM

Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini: The great achievement of these film directors was to create living souls to look at, that we might know ourselves

"...after one has smiled and bowed? When two master directors, who once shook my life to the core --..."

Aug. 17, 2007 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

If I hadn't become a writer, I'm sure I would still keep the scribbles and torn scraps that I jot down like fragments from an inner life

"...write declarative sentences meant only, or mostly, as instructions to ourselves – sudden insights or hunches like messages in..."

July 20, 2007 Column by Michael Ventura

« 1    ‹ BACK    1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10     NEXT ›    22 »