Tag Archives: books

Last night Dawn and I went to a Halloween party – she was Courtney Love and I was Kurt Cobain. No one recognized us – they just thought she was a whore and I was Jeff Spicoli. How soon they forget. We are once again in tune with the zeitgeist: …

When I first read the subtitle of Ty Templeton’s graphic novel Bigg Time: A Farcical Fable of Fleeting Fame (Vertigo), I must admit I was not enthused. Another satire of disposable celebhood – was there anything new that cartoonist Templeton would be able to wring out of this overdiscussed subject? …

What is the highest compliment payable to a stout, 800-page collocation of investigative articles, cultural and literary essays, think pieces, and random philosophical noodling? That I was sad when it was over – aggrieved that my boon companion of a full month would no longer startle, amaze, entertain or edify …

Every biographer of a musical figure, indeed every writer about music, must deal with the issue of conveying the essence of one medium through the use of another: the “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” conundrum. While we seem to have no trouble feeling the abstracted meaning of …

First off, don’t be fooled by the title: A Plague of Frogs: The Horrifying True Story would be more aptly, but less apocalyptically, entitled A Plague on Frogs: The Disconcerting True Story. I eagerly dove into William Souder’s real-life scientific adventure/mystery with neo-Biblical visions of amphibians raining upon good Lutherans …

John Mallon discusses the Byrds and their progeny in NRO: I am in the land of giants!” Chris Hillman exclaimed as he stepped onstage at the Double Stop Music Hall in Guthrie, Okla. Hillman should know something about giants – despite his unassuming presence, he is a giant in the …

For this year’s National Book Awards nominations and bios, please see here and here. The Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters this year will go to Philip Roth, one of America’s most acclaimed and inventive authors, whose prolific publishing history over six decades has achieved both best-seller status and …

See here for National Book Awards finalists announcement and bios of the Young People’s and Nonfiction authors. Here are the Poetry and Fiction bios: FINALISTS FOR THE 2002 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY Harryette Mullen, Sleeping with the Dictionary (University of California Press) Inspired by acrostics, anagrams, and puns; a …

The National Book Foundation announced the finalists for the National Book Awards today: THE 2002 NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS FINALISTS YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE M.T. Anderson, Feed (Candlewick Press) Nancy Farmer, The House of the Scorpion (A Richard Jackson Book/Atheneum Books for Young Readers) Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems …

The sordid, bifurcated life of Bob Crane comes to the big screen. I loved Hogan’s Heroes as a kid: I didn’t much care that a comedy about prisoners of war in WWll was in preposterous bad taste. The fantasy that the prisoners were actually empowered by their situation was the …