Arcs usually make sense; start at point A, development happens, arrive at point B. This is all over the place to the extent that I don't even know what to call it. The writers are playing whatever random note in whatever random key like the worst open-mic night improv jazz you'll ever hear.

Lou Reed's Transformer and Television's Marquee Moon. Wouldn't change a note on either.

I'm nearing the end of Don DeLillo's Libra and if he pulls off the assassination scene (which, given the greatness of the whole Pafko at the Wall bit in Underworld, he probably will) it'll be pretty close to 'best DeLillo ever' kinda heights.

Oh, I'm well aware. Didn't include him because he's not really considered part of 'modernism' (even though modernism almost rivals post-modernism in terms of nebulous wank lit-crit terminology). Poetry certainly attracts a type!

My favourite poem is probably Ezra Pound's "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" or Eliot's "Prufrock" or something (man I really hate how modernist poets were probably the best poets but also often raging anti-semite assholes) but I think this particular Larkin gem is underappreciated:

Eh, he made a decent enough life for himself in The Book of Eli, and that was an actual nuclear apocalypse. A plague of shambling, putrefied cannibals just sounds like good fodder for his next album.

Reckon "Earth Died Screaming" would have been more appropriate.

I've read and loved everything of Wallace's but that rap book, Everything and More and The Pale King, which I can't even seem to get 60 pages into. Not comparing the two seriously, but the feeling I got from trying to start it is not unlike the feeling I got when I had hubris enough to think I could make any serious…

I made an abortive attempt to watch The Sopranos a few years ago and I gave up around episode 7. Nothing to do with the quality, but the realization that there was effectively seven series worth of show (and, not incidentally, an annoying friend who just would not shut up about how good it was) put me off continuing.…

Ugh, ANOTHER reinterpreted myth. When do these ever turn out well?

Everyone nominated for Best Supporting Actor has won an Oscar before. Fucks up the 'rewarding the guy they didn't reward when they probably should have' system but good.

7) Autistic reporter Michael Falk showing up to help disappear Brody:

7) Autistic reporter Michael Falk showing up to help disappear Brody:

I don't see what more they can get out of Brody as a character even if they do find somewhere plausible for him to hide out. It seemed like from the interrogation episode onward they wrung basically everything they could out of him. It's bizarre to me that a serious, post-Sopranos cable drama can be so transparently…

I don't see what more they can get out of Brody as a character even if they do find somewhere plausible for him to hide out. It seemed like from the interrogation episode onward they wrung basically everything they could out of him. It's bizarre to me that a serious, post-Sopranos cable drama can be so transparently…

I was convinced before the episode aired that failing to kill Brody at the obvious 'kill Brody' point for the second year running would turn me off this show for good. Given how great this season's been overall, this wasn't especially fair.

I was convinced before the episode aired that failing to kill Brody at the obvious 'kill Brody' point for the second year running would turn me off this show for good. Given how great this season's been overall, this wasn't especially fair.

He played an irritating douchebag to perfection in In The Loop as well, though he was a careerist sycophant rather than a hipster.

He played an irritating douchebag to perfection in In The Loop as well, though he was a careerist sycophant rather than a hipster.

Given how conclusive the ending is, I don't know how you'd make a post-ROTJ Star Wars film good, so I kinda hope it's not that. I also hope they get someone more interesting than Gore Verbinski to direct, as this seems like something they'd give to him based on his previous experience making lots of money with big…