Why “The Pounce”?

I’m at work on a novel set in 1970. In it, a school-skipping teenager and her cousin, a Vietnam medic, spend their afternoons in New York City movie theaters. To understand them better, I began watching the films they would have seen, then writing for hours afterward.

Watching their films led to writing about them, and writing led back to the films. Before long, I realized it had become a small, absorbing practice of its own: noticing what cinema does to my attention, and what my attention does in return. Not quite theory, not quite review — more like being in conversation with the work.

A doubled meaning

As for the name: “pounce” is an old art term for transferring a design through tiny holes dusted with fine powder. I’m drawn to its image of craft and process. It describes what happens here: ideas traveling lightly between film and fiction, each illuminating the other.

I’m tracing the movement, trying things out, watching the shapes evolve.

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Thank you for reading. I hope The Pounce gives you something unexpected — a second look, a new angle, a question to turn over. I’d love to hear what you’re watching.