chris knapp
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chrisknapp.bsky.social
chris knapp
@chrisknapp.bsky.social
650 followers 580 following 120 posts
writer/journalist in paris. work in the paris review, granta, nplusone, among others. debut novel STATES OF EMERGENCY from unnamed press, sept 2024

chrisknapp.net

https://www.unnamedpress.com/all-books/p/states-of-emergency
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chrisknapp.bsky.social
Woof
October 23, 2025 at 11:24 AM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
It’ll be such a great loss if this film never sees the light of day

www.nytimes.com/2024/09/08/m...
I thought about whether seeing these images amounted to a desecration. Does the whole world need to know about the very private, ugly torments of this genius? But then I registered the dominant sensation the film produced, which was awe. Whatever chaos was unfolding in the corners of Paisley Park, in public Prince alchemized it into singing that was majestic and generative and leapt over walls. The film shows, more movingly and convincingly than almost anything I've seen, how life can illuminate art, and yet how separate the two things really are. The bruises and mess of experience are transfigured by the artist into something coherent and whole: a perfect offering.
March 4, 2025 at 9:47 PM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
It’ll be a great loss if we never get to see this film

www.nytimes.com/2024/09/08/m...
I thought about whether seeing these images amounted to a desecration. Does the whole world need to know about the very private, ugly torments of this genius? But then I registered the dominant sensation the film produced, which was awe. Whatever chaos was unfolding in the corners of Paisley Park, in public Prince alchemized it into singing that was majestic and generative and leapt over walls. The film shows, more movingly and convincingly than almost anything I've seen, how life can illuminate art, and yet how separate the two things really are. The bruises and mess of experience are transfigured by the artist into something coherent and whole: a perfect offering.
March 4, 2025 at 9:32 PM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
@nytimes.com why do all these headlines that make him sound like jimmy stewart?
The Daily episode with headline “Elon Musk takes on Washington” with a photo of musk raving at a podium
February 5, 2025 at 1:06 PM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
Things presented in this very British article about childhood development trends as equally distressing:

-not being potty trained
-not being able to climb stairs
-lacking the core strength to sit up independently
-using American vocabulary
Screencap from a Guardian article Screencap from a Guardian article
January 30, 2025 at 1:00 AM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
Gonna need more Luigis
Musk, Bezos; Zuckerberg etc in front row at inauguration
January 21, 2025 at 5:58 PM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
Is there anyone who exemplifies this Sartre thing more precisely than Musk?
Sartre: Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. Elon Musk doing nazi salute
January 20, 2025 at 11:21 PM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
I can't describe how angry it makes me to see this piece of shit crying about his pool after calling for genocide in Palestine
headline from Variety about James Wood breaking down on CNN, with quote "One day you're swimming in the pool and the next day it' all gone" and a screengrab of him hold his head James Woods on twitter using hashtag killthemall in reference to Palestinians
January 10, 2025 at 12:25 PM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
Putting Sick Fans’ Delight on a tshirt
ny post headline: “Luigi mangione oddly wears matching outfit with his lawyer to his sick fans’ delight”
December 24, 2024 at 7:23 PM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
There’s also the fact that these 50+ days have continued apace but the death toll hasn’t really moved for months.

I don’t think it’s a media conspiracy so much as a reflection of how completely any kind of institutional infrastructure has been wiped out.
December 11, 2024 at 8:07 PM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
If we're kiboshing stuff, can we do biopics and corporate origin stories before nostalgia concerts please?
NYT headline: "No more nostalgia concerts please"
December 4, 2024 at 12:59 PM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
Thrilled be one of @literaryhub.bsky.social’s faves of the year!!
Write up of States of emergency in lithub: “In his debut novel, Knapp balances the intensely personal and the global, reminding us there is no difference between the two (until there is). The narrator is an American, who at the beginning of the book is sweltering in 2015 Paris with his French wife, both of them mired in anxiety about her most recent fertility treatment. But like many prospective parents, he is also worrying about the state of the world, a world, both present and past, that Knapp lets into the book in heady streams; this creates an unusual and often quite moving tension between the sections of extreme intimacy—the scenes between the narrator and his wife, and particularly the scenes in the hospital, are so moving as to be difficult to describe—and geopolitical complexities, all of it mediated by the book’s knowledge of itself. It is a thoroughly modern book that feels old, the kind of thing we need more of. –ET”
December 3, 2024 at 3:51 PM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
Post dog
a dog named charlie on a footbridge over a lake in burgundy france
December 2, 2024 at 4:50 PM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
It’s not the main point of the movie but this little kid looks like John Updike
Screencap of a kid who looks like John Updike Screencap of a kid who looks like John Updike
November 26, 2024 at 11:11 PM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
this is on mubi for a few more days can someone watch it for me and explain the timeline please
Still from Kokoloko with Alejandra Herrera Still from Kokoloko with Noé Hernández Still from Kokoloko with Alejandra Herrera
November 24, 2024 at 6:00 PM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
This is the funniest one of these
November 24, 2024 at 11:50 AM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
I’d forgotten all about it
Woodstove w/ snow outside
November 21, 2024 at 12:32 PM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
There goes my day
November 21, 2024 at 11:45 AM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
Watched this (Transit, 2018) a few weeks ago, and the way it folds history on itself makes it feel almost painfully relevant to whatever's coming next in the US
November 19, 2024 at 10:40 PM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
I want what he’s got
A maybe ten-year-old kid on the back of his dad’s bike in heavy Paris traffic, reading a graphic novel like a hero
October 11, 2023 at 6:29 PM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
Just about everything this guy writes contains a passage that should permanently disqualify him from film criticism but this one especially has got me hopping mad
“Laughter and tears are like sneezes, physiological responses without aesthetic substance. That’s why I don’t think less of a comedy that doesn’t make me laugh. What matters is the style with which it tries. Though “Bottoms” gave me a few laughs through sheer relentlessness of effort, it’s seriously style-challenged, not least because it tries so hard. The tone is one of near-realism, which seems to promise much in the way of character and situation, but the action stretches from exaggeration to absurdity with a wave of the hand”
October 8, 2023 at 1:10 PM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
Me and who
Statue in Luxembourg gardens of a lady holding a jug of wine on her shoulder from which some dude is drinking with visible enthusiasm
October 2, 2023 at 2:42 PM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
Wiseman always ruins me for narrative features for a solid week
Black and white film still with subtitles in French: “God is not a man like the social services” Film still, man and woman in a waiting room, subtitles in French of man is speaking to God: “Our agreement goes way back, I won’t waiver.” Same man in waiting room speaking to God, subtitles in French: “I must do what you want and suffer.”
September 30, 2023 at 12:48 PM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
Seems they’ve got Magritte doing the custodial signage at the French national archives
A trash can with a laminated notice that reads “this is not a trash can” in French
September 27, 2023 at 1:19 PM
chrisknapp.bsky.social
French national archives, all day every day
Shallow fountain with a weird sculpture in a courtyard of the French national archives in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine
September 22, 2023 at 3:10 PM