[contextly_auto_sidebar id="vsIAkFjrXusRtaqu8qZ48niChaYcVmTM"] ONE of the breakout books of the fall is Jeff Hobbs's new chronicle of his Yale roomate, a young black man who escaped the streets of Newark and found himself, in the end, pulled back down by some of the same old forces. I'm reading The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace now and amazed at how rich the detail is: It's powerful -- … [Read more...]
Musician Dean Wareham Raves on About Culture Crash the Book
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="vyqP11F1681n3YcQlEIIXhqmzlNi3MAa"] ONE of my favorite indie rock musicians -- a member of Galaxie 500, Luna, and Dean & Britta -- has endorsed my upcoming book. Here's what he says: I read Scott Timberg’s pieces every week without fail. It’s great to see his book Culture Crash debunk the mumbo jumbo about the long tail, file-sharing, free information, and … [Read more...]
What Killed Adulthood? Pop Culture or Capitalism?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="jery8F5jteMew95L1w4tWKmHZdFvaBDv"] ONE of the smarter back and forths over the last week or so has been the response to A.O. Scott's essay "The Post-Man," on how genuine adulthood has seeped out of American culture. He's taken the usual hits for being a nostalgic, entitled, puritanical white man -- charges I'm sure he could see coming a mile away -- most of which … [Read more...]
Author M.G. Lord on Culture Crash
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="gXQfcIniw8p3iX6eCSgrKCkQ9mR6Oq04"] Over the next few weeks I'll be posting the endorsements I get for my upcoming book Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class, due in January from Yale University Press. With coolness and equanimity, Scott Timberg tells what in less-skilled hands could have been an overwrought horror story: the end of culture as we have … [Read more...]
James Ellroy, The Big Picture
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="oWUL3zIX6tkrbLbqzzcrPNH15S6oj1MP"] HOW does the new Ellroy novel, Perfidia, shape our thinking of his career? How has he changed as a writer? How does he fit in to noir's history, and has he changed the field? These questions were on my mind while I was writing a recent profile of the edgy novelist, so I asked J. Kingston Pierce, editor of The Rap Sheet crime fiction … [Read more...]
James Ellroy: The Demon Dog is Back
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="J9S6BFoEKctFIUF9sCOFryBh5uvOWyC0"] AFTER completing his Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy and writing a memoir about his often tortured relationships with women, crime writer James Ellroy is back with a new quartet of novels that will serve as a prequel to his Los Angeles Quartet -- the four great novels that include L.A. Confidential. A few days ago, I hung out with … [Read more...]
Endgame: Culture and Suicide
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="3jo4huPHGtmGS71JRG98EimGVUeNIngq"] HOW has Western literary culture dealt with the ending of life? How do we see it now? Today guest columnist Lawrence Christon looks at a bundle of complex and painful issues, as recent as the death of Robin Williams and as old as the work of Albert Camus and perhaps Shakespeare. This one is not for the faint of heart. "ENDGAME," … [Read more...]
The “Antifree” Movement Takes on “Free”
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="hMpJwAX7ROFisoxfaiwhWpOQbmzRcRS5"] BY now, we're all pretty familiar with the information-wants-to-be-free argument, and if you write for a living, or have had to endure numerous unpaid internships to break into a creative field, you know it all too well. A wide-ranging, perceptive, and slightly arch essay in the hip Brooklyn journal n+1 sketches out the … [Read more...]
“Is Spotify Killing Music?”
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="AJwkTxpSjSsEeL7n5JFPH23s6m8blcVb"] TWO descendants of Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck make a good illustration of what's happened to the lives of musicians lately. A new story -- co-written by yours truly -- up on TakePart looks at how musicians are being proletarianized, and I don't just mean the lyrics. The story -- written with Kathleen Sharp -- weaves between … [Read more...]
Creativity and “Powers of Two”
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="h6kHO9RuWKQjpO1pgA06PU80n7f3lQ1n"] JOSHUA Wolf Shenk's new book, Powers of Two: Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs, is the subject of my latest story. Shenk looks at more than 100 partnerships -- some overt, some hidden -- to try to distill the process of creation and derive patterns. He works especially with figures in literature and the arts -- … [Read more...]