Sounds like a pretty good, well-conceived film, riasing issues of the power of & despair accomapanying the artist's intoxication with words and with his work . But the reviewer seems to be under the illusion that a) only "old" white male writers die, b) only old "white" male writers toil at their craft(writing in longhand or on Remingtons, not "noodling" in Starbucks), c)only old white male "writers" are real writers (i.e., novelists), and d)only old white "male" writers have been marginalized thru some (I'm assuming) "politically correct" critical and historical process that have left them mum, defenseless, irrelevant, and, Jesus, old.

There unquestionably is a bias against older writers in TV and movies, everyone near those environments knows it. There is much less, arguably zero age bias against those who write for print. The challenge for them is to be read. Some can be commercially appealing, like Elmore Leonard. Some never cared about commercial success beyond being published. And there are still publishers who will publish if the writing is good.

They say the best physicists and mathematicians are past it before they're 30. But writing is about creative parts of the brain that keep maturing, and when you add experience, you've got fine art. The Internet, and such revolutionary projects as Google's digitizing of everything in print, and the rise of digital filmmaking give hope that all worthy writing will find an audience.

So the often perverse biases of the young can be overcome. There is life after hip-hop.

But I have to agree that the idea that old white male novelists are "out of fashion" is silly. They've been back in fashion for several years now. Look at how much attention Philip Roth gets every time he publishes -- even a mediocre book like Exit Ghost. That whole crowd -- Bellow, Updike, Mailer -- keeps/kept getting lots of accolades even when the work didn't/doesn't really merit it.

But I have to agree that the idea that old white male novelists are "out of fashion" is silly. They've been back in fashion for several years now. Look at how much attention Philip Roth gets every time he publishes -- even a mediocre book like Exit Ghost. That whole crowd -- Bellow, Updike, Mailer -- keeps/kept getting lots of accolades even when the work didn't/doesn't really merit it.

Stephanie:

What happened? This was a wonderful review that celebrates the artists' nuance, subtlety, and craft. And then? You inexplicably lob a pedantic lead balloon into the mix. THUD. It's as if the movie triggered a deep-seated guilt and regret for, e.g., excoriating (I presume your old, white?) "unenlightened" grandpa with the superciliousness of a mistakenly self-righteous college sophomore. Okay; please say more about THAT. But don't "tsk-tsk" readers for dissin' and dismissing old white men writers! To do so overstates your case. Even Bill O'Reilly says --much to the surprise of a few listeners who await his sympathetic mewlings while they rage against anti-white male machines -- that if you're a white man in America, you're likely doing alright.

"Heather isn't wholly unsympathetic -- she doesn't know how to control what she's started, simply because it's uncontrollable. She's a young person who has allowed herself to be guided by impulse and ambition rather than compassion.

"Taylor also gives a wonderful performance here: Her Ariel has a breathless, open-hearted quality that makes you want to protect her, but she's not a sap -- the mistakes she makes are the normal ones any of us might make in figuring out what we want out of life and how to get it. She also carries the movie's most beautiful and most wrenching moment, one that I suspect will resonate with any adult who has ever lost, or faced the possible loss of, a parent. "

THANK YOU.

I will still go see this movie despite the pitiful attempt by Stephanie to play the tired "white males are the victim race card"'..

I think America has tired of that script.....

Besides Roth and Updike, there's Cormac McCarthy, who's 75 and just won the Pulitzer Prize. Richard Ford is 63 and published a book last year. Robert Olen Butler, a former Pulitzer Prize winner, is 62. Richard Russo, also a Pulitzer winner, is 59 and published a new novel this year. How many of these old guys does Stephanie Bubblehead want/need? Talk about creating a phony crisis.

The Beowulf/LOTR story is top of the page, but the letters section is closed. Is that counterintuitive or what?

Old, white, male writers: They can all die, as far as I'm concerned. I just finished a novel last night by a new guy named E.L. Doctorow. He rocks!

This story seems completely uninteresting. Film and the Historical Romance Novel have always gotten along pretty well. Now we have to drag the aging novelist along with it?

Why not a film about a retired Freeway engineer, who gets his name placed on a bridge which thousands of people pass over every day? He tried to carve something out of stone, (and he succeeded) was his epitath.

An audience which is hardwired to hate the character, the story, the genre, the very words of the review. But I guess that's sort of the point of the movie, in an inverse way. Does it sting, Saloniks, to the object of such scorn?

Anything at all?

Maybe you could hire an old white male writer to help out with the prufreeding.

Stephanie Zacharek:

This was as excellent a review as I have seen in recent years. A fine, observant, thoughtful and sensitive piece of work.

Thanks

Professor Emeritus Pete Bagnolo

That you even ask is ample proof of the point being made.

women rule now. women and their thoughts.

Poor old Mailer, marginalized as he was by the NY left for taking on feminism.

He was the last of a breed.

Now it is the land of make believe political correctness as far as the eye can make out. Young men, well, they're too busy screwing young women or playing Halo. Fatherless and rudderless.

Poor old old men. Glue horses is all.

Nobody needs men,