Books
Reading Sumiteru Taniguchi’s book brought back my memories of meeting a man who had witnessed the unimaginable.
John Giorno was in the vanguard of what later became the herd: Ginsberg, Kerouac, Warhol, Buddhism, Burroughs, enlightenment, spiritual quests to India, unfettered sex, wild poetry, new technology, experimental forms of expression, queer politics, pot, speed, LSD — all the household bric-a-brac of the counterculture.
It’s hard to critique a novel that flies under such a resplendent banner, a wholesale rejection of the dead and decaying world of trends and war and meaninglessness.
“Ornette was looking for those notes, the ones that feel no pain.”
Ah, Florida, “the grease trap under America’s George Foreman Grill”: not just “weird America,” also “impending America.”
Twilight of Democracy made me yearn (uncharacteristically) for hard scientific data to supplement Anne Applebaum’s punditry about the pundits.
Practical handbook, compendium of theory, or history of an American tradition? A little of each… but enough of any?
These days, I worry that David Mitchell is losing touch with reality.
Two Californias is full of humor, good writing, and thoughtful angles on human existence—with zombies thrown in for good measure.
It wasn’t until 2009 that a trove of Florence B. Price scores was discovered in a dilapidated house in down-state Illinois and a revival of interest in this most remarkable of composers began in earnest.
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