Cormac McCarthy, The Road (2006)

Perhaps the ultimate novel about trash - a novel in which trash is the main character. Some prefer Kerouac's version, but to me it's even more sentimental and bleak.

Chardin, Monkey Antiquarian

Paintings of monkeys cultivating the arts and sciences were all the rage in Europe in the 18th century, a sort of classical "Far Side". This one seems "absorbed" in numismatics - oriental numismatics, we hope.

Infinite Jest (1996)

Another of the best books about trash, as deep and insinuating as trash itself. Wallace is like Fielding: his niceties become the object of their own parody, and this would seem like mere cleverness, except that it so insistently displays the limits of self-consciousness.

Springfield, Ill. 2007

Booth at the White House, beyond the pale.

Sweet Movie (1974)

A daring expose of the excesses of the confection industry, in the spirit of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971). Stanley Cavell has rightly said of director Dusan Makavejev, "If you can think like this, nothing is beyond mattering to you."

Coelacanths of L. A.

At the Neon Museum. What's in them? On the right, two fried eggs, or a vizard. On the left, an antenna of some sort? or a liturgical impliment? or both?

Scarface (1932)

Why is that coin-flipping gesture so repugnant? The coin-flipper takes pleasure in touching money.