“His life was the saddest poetry.”  I remember those lines catching my eyes from the header of a LA Times article my father dropped next to my breakfast plate one morning.  ”Read it,” he grunted, filling a mug with steaming black coffee. “I haven’t come across such good writing in the Times in awhile.  Take a look.”  I’m ashamed to admit I don’t read the paper very often, but when someone from Columbia’s English Ph.D program — who reads dictionaries for leisure — tosses “good writing” your way, you read it.  So I did.  Two years later, watching Flux’s advance screening of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus at Nike’s Montalbán, that strikingly tragic line echoed in my mind like a haunting overture. [Read more]