ONE of my favorite-ever author meetings was a lunch interview with Tom Perrotta around the time of The Abstinence Teacher. (I was in New England and swung to the fringe of Boston to meet him.) The novel's film adaptation was already rolling despite the fact that the book hadn't come out yet -- credit the success of Little Children for that one.The Abstinence Teacher, like his new one, The … [Read more...]
Archives for August 2011
The Roots of Philip Glass
THE minimalist composer is the latest subject of my Influences column in the Los Angeles Times.We spoke about his teacher Nadia Boulanger, sitar player Ravi Shankar, composer/philosopher John Cage, Gandhi and Allen Ginsberg, who Glass got to know well.I mentioned to Glass before we started to talk for real that I had a new respect for anyone who wrote music since I'd started a very amateur study … [Read more...]
The Return of Brian Selznick
IF you’re the kind of grownup who enjoys smart, well-drawn children’s novels, you might be as excited as I am to hear the Brian Selznick has a new novel, Wonderstruck, coming in September.I met Selznick a few years back on the publication of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, his nearly wordless book about an orphan hiding out in a Parisian train station. (I have another, more recent connection with … [Read more...]
Jazz, Joni Mitchell and the Hollywood Bowl
YOU'LL get less of the introverted poet of Blue and only a hint of the lipstick-and-beret chanteuse of Court and Spark. Instead, Wednesday night will summon the jazz phase Joni Mitchell went through in the mid-to-late '70s. HERE is my LA Times story on the Hollywood Bowl show, Joni's Jazz, which will include all kinds of good people -- including Herbie Hancock, who recently took some … [Read more...]
Simon Reynolds Goes Retro
HAS the end of cultural history ever been so much fun? Your humble scribe has been reading Simon Reynolds since his work was a well-kept secret of the British music press. (He was also, during the ‘90s, one of two rock-crit Simons in the Village Voice, the other being the code-cracking rock sociologist Simon Frith.)He’s written with insight and intelligence about rock n roll, subculture, shoegaze, … [Read more...]