“The hard necessity of bringing the judge on the bench down into the dock has been the peculiar responsibility of the writer in all ages of man.” — Nelson Algren He would have been 102 today. Algren was the author of more than a dozen books. Born on March 28, 1909, in Detroit, he lived […]

And We’re Still Counting The Cost of the War in Iraq (JavaScript Error)

If it’s true that professional boxing now has 68 world title holders in 17 weight classes, as The Wall Street Journal recently reported, then it’s not surprising that AT THE FIGHTS: American Writers on Boxing, a new anthology from The Library of America, reads like an elegy for the fight game. More than five dozen […]

“Bradley Manning has been stripped naked every night and made to parade in front of his officers and guards in the nude” for the past nine days, according to The Guardian, which has just published Manning’s own description of his treatment. It is the first time Manning has spoken out about the details of his […]

Mike Lawrence sends word that he’s “off and running on BACH & more friends,” a companion film to his previous Bach & friends. “I have several players lined up, and I’ve contacted a bunch of big guns,” he says in an e-mail. He’s still waiting to hear whether the big guns will participate. That’s what […]

Ian MacFadyen’s astounding book-length essay about the avant garde artist-poet-novelist Brion Gysin, “A Trip from Here to There,” knocked me out. It had just been posted at RealityStudio, so I was raving about it — couldn’t help myself — to anyone within listening distance. Along came a savvy, multilingual writer I’m acquainted with, precisely the […]

How about Christopher Hitchens? OK, how about Willy Wyler? EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

The Guardian reports: The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is to be extradited to Sweden [from the U.K.] to face allegations of rape and sexual assault. Assange will appeal, his legal team has confirmed. If they lose he will be sent to Sweden in 10 days. He will “be held in custody,” the report also said, […]

Here we go again, this time vs. the NYT Book Review. You decide. © 1969 by Norman O. Mustill These images are from Norman O. Mustill’s Twinpak, one of a series of Nova Broadcast pamphlets published in San Francisco in 1969. This image is Barbara deWilde‘s illustration for the cover of The New York Times […]

It’s hard to believe, but some people want to know how to become a copy editor. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Here’s the headline on the exclusive report in today’s Guardian: Defector admits to WMD lies that triggered Iraq war. Which reminds me of this blogpost — HIT BY A CURVEBALL — published way back on July 11, 2004: David Johnston’s report on how the “Powers That Be” conned Americans into believing Iraq had weapons of […]

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The cache, dubbed william s. burroughs word horde 2.0, is priced at $260,000. Apparently some institution, or somebody with that kinda bus fare, already has dibs on it. The dealer — Ken Lopez Bookseller — has it listed with a “hold.” Here’s what he has to say about the collection: A substantial archive of manuscript […]

Oh, gee. Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, is terribly upset. In his view, Julian Assange is the very scruffy model of a modern major-general. File his complaint under Gilbert and Sullivan; see The Pirates of Penzance. Keller is a mirthless feller. I am the very model of a modern Major-General, I’ve […]

Now that Hollywood’s hype is fully upon us — I’m talking about the Oscar nominations — it’s worth recalling what William Wyler, far and away the most Oscar-nominated director, once said: Sitting here in this room, I can see a beautiful bridge — the George Washington Bridge — spanning the Hudson River. It is a […]

Lizzy Ratner said she was in “triage mode” finishing up an article, and could she answer my question in “two or three days?” The question was, what prompted her to co-edit THE GOLDSTONE REPORT: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict? It was just published by Nation Books. She hasn’t got back […]

On Martin Luther King Day, let’s see … As Glenn Greenwald rightly explains in a devastating column on the “centrist” opposition to the rule of law by the Brookings Institution — a Washington, D.C. think tank widely regarded as the best and most “independent,” with a reputation for rising “above partisanship” — the difference is […]