(AS A FOLO TO THE previous post, and at the urging of sinister forces who would prefer I remain nameless, I now present a reprint from the bygone Bulletin of Obscure Research, Far Corner (v1n5, c. 1991): an interview with…
Tag: writers
A breed apart from ordinary humans, and responsible for much of their culture. Some would call them the salvation of humanity; others wouldn’t call them a cab.
Talmidei Torah Considered As The Great Motorcycle Dialectic
(sans apology to and/or connection with Messrs. Jarry et Ballard) THERE ARE THE HARLEY RIDERS. They would not dream of owning any transportation they couldn’t twiddle with or hack. Every knob, every switch, every gear is known and its connection…
See, This Is Why I Love Jack Vance
IT’S NOT THAT HE RENDERS whole worlds so vividly and so succinctly, peopling vast and history-thick galaxies with one or two spare sentences. It’s not the cinematic sweep of his prose, which respects his readers’ visual imagination by meeting it…
R. Crumb, Darshan
MOST REVIEWS OF R. CRUMB’S “The Book of Genesis Illustrated” seem astonished that the man who kept us truckin’ through the ’60s could possibly give the Goode Booke such a serious rendering. But what astonishes me is that Crumb has…
How To Write
SUCCINCTLY.
Journalism As Art Imitating Life
CAN WRITERS REPORT? THAT QUESTION nets a “yes” according to Daniel Elstrin in the June 19 Forward, reporting on the day Haaretz (think Israeli NYT) swapped its staff for 31 leading authors and poets: “Among those articles were gems like…
Happy Bloomsday!
105 YEARS AGO TODAY, LEO Bloom took his famous fictive walk through Dublin seeing the same places and eating the same foods as his latterday followers did, will do or have done today. (Me, I’ll be sitting on the floor…
Paul Williams Support Fund
IF YOU PASSED THROUGH THE 1970s and ’80s, you likely read his Das Energi, his rock criticism, or his Philip K. Dick scholarship. Now he, like so many, needs our help.
Read This Book
THERE IS A Conversation THAT I’ve been having with a friend since we were both in high school, and the initial-cap in that word is due not to the colloquy’s duration but to its content. Its thesis is simple: that…
Re-Re-RE-Reads
SOME BOOKS ARE FINISHED IN a day; others, only when we are. If books are portable doorways, then stepping into a beloved-since-childhood instant Now every few years can sometimes tell us where we’ve been in the meanwhile. As one of…
Bookshelf: Larry Niven
ONE NICE THING ABOUT BEING laid up is the chance to reacquaint myself with some old childhood friends; e.g., Larry Niven and his Known Space series. For those who don’t know, Known Space is a 60-light-year-diameter bubble and a thousand…
An Apology to Douglas Rushkoff
In my previous, I made a cutting remark about Douglas Ruskoff’s “Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism.” While my opinion remains that the book is deeply flawed, as noted by, among others, Zeek.net), I didn’t intend to be dismissive. For…