It is no surprise that author David Shields's first major foray into film, I Think You're Totally Wrong, is about his art—its present, its past, its future, its limits, its demands. The film is directed by James Franco, and it is based on the book Shields wrote with Caleb Powell about two writers who travel from Seattle to a cabin in the Cascade Mountains to quarrel about the meaning of literature. Powell, a former student of Shields's, is bighearted and puts too much humanity and feeling into his work. Shields is the opposite. He's intellectual, a bit heartless—he doesn't believe human suffering can be resolved by literature. Art is above all about art.

See Caleb Powell, David Shields, and Charles Mudede in conversation on February 15.

Read the full review by Charles Mudede