[contextly_auto_sidebar] A FEW weeks ago I got a historical novel, written for adults, called Little, based on the life of Madame Tussaud. I soon learned that my 12-year-old son had beaten me to this author's work: He'd already read Heap House, the first novel in the outlandish, fantasy-based The Iremonger Trilogy, aimed at precocious kids. I was lucky enough to speak to the writer, Edward … [Read more...]
The Poetry of Leonard Cohen
[contextly_auto_sidebar] HE was born before Elvis, had his songs covered by everyone from Judy Collins to the Pixies, and managed five decades of brilliant work in a field that tends to see only bright flares. Leonard Cohen is known as a more-or-less rock musician to most of us, but he started out as a poet, publishing books for a decade before his debut LP. The other day I met Cohen's son, … [Read more...]
Reading With Aimee Mann
[contextly_auto_sidebar] LAST week I took a wild guess and approached singer/songwriter Aimee Mann for my musicians-on-writing column, All the Poets. As a longtime fan I had a vague sense that she was literary -- whatever that means -- but could not recall a specific reference to a novel or poem in any of her songs. Nor had we talked about books of any kind across the several interviews we'd … [Read more...]
Indie Publishing With Hat & Beard
[contextly_auto_sidebar] ONE of the things I'm most interested is how non-corporate, non-mainstream culture can survive after the 2008 crash. My conversations with J.C. Gabel -- the intense, passionate publisher of a small LA press called Hat & Beard -- give us all a glimpse of both the challenges to independent culture merchants as well as the possibilities. Hat & Beard is about to … [Read more...]
Ayn Rand and Libertarianism
[contextly_auto_sidebar] FOR most of my life -- I was a kid during the Reagan Revolution -- I've been puzzled by otherwise smart people falling for Libertarianism and Ayn Rand's brand of freedom snake oil. Everybody likes the idea of freedom, but for the Fountainhead crowd, the notion acquires cartoonish dimensions, and their definition of the term seems to tilt toward rich businessmen and … [Read more...]
The Dark Magic of Ottessa Moshfegh
[contextly_auto_sidebar] IT's not often that I pick up a book and get a new favorite writer. But that's pretty close to what happened when a story collection called Homesick For Another World, by a young author I'd not heard of, arrived in the mail one day. I read a few dark, alienated short stories, some of which were set in a dreary, bleached-out, dingbat-lined Los Angeles. I found a noirish … [Read more...]
Handguns, the Press, and Annapolis
[contextly_auto_sidebar] Almost a quarter century ago, I worked as intern, in my last year of journalism school, at the Baltimore Sun. This was a rough few months for me -- I earned nothing for five-days-a-week in the paper's features department, the city was experiencing a crime wave right up to the edge of my neighborhood, and I was breaking up with a pretty serious girlfriend during just … [Read more...]
Martin Amis on Poetry and Posterity
[contextly_auto_sidebar] AS smart and funny as his novels are, Martin Amis is a devastatingly good essayist as well. I spoke to him recently about his latest collection, The Rub of Time, which assembles several decades of nonfiction pieces. The subject of the book is the toll taken by the ages -- the way it gradually erodes talent and inspiration as surely as it does the soil on a hillside. … [Read more...]
Punk, Indie Rock and Power Pop With Chris Stamey
[contextly_auto_sidebar] Though he's hardly a household name, North Carolina's Chris Stamey has been just alongside many of the key developments in left-of-the-dial rock music over the last four decades. As a young Southerner he visited and then moved to New York City right as CBGB's and Television were exploding, he helped found the dBs and Let's Active, which put him on on the ground floor of … [Read more...]
The Literary Courtney Barnett
[contextly_auto_sidebar] I CAN remember only a few times I've heard a song and immediately known I was hearing a major talent, someone I'd be paying attention to for years to come. The Smiths, Liz Phair, Pavement, Thelonious Monk, and Glenn Gould have all struck me that way. Time will tell if she really belongs in their company, but the Aussie singer-songwriter knocked me out with her song … [Read more...]