BY MAVIS LINNEMANN BOOK CRITIC All too often reviewers say a book is “laugh-out-loud funny,” but when you finally read it, it’s about as funny as child abuse. That’s not the case with Simon Rich‘s Ant Farm: And Other Desperate Situations. The book’s super-short vignettes and mini-dialogues had me howling in my subway seat, much to the consternation of the other morning commuters. Only 22-years-old and freshly graduated from Harvard, Rich (son of New York Times columnist Frank Rich) will no doubt be tickling the short-attention span funny bones of Generations Y & Z for years to come. Recently he […]
HOLLA: The Tao Of Poo
BY JAMES DOOLITTLE As the wife can attest, the only thing this here Wook likes more than the 19 weeks of sex tied into the latest R. Kelly release (that’s right, one track per week) is a good, healthy, hearty dump. Alright, alright, maybe I’d place “The Wire” and a slice of “quattro formaggio” from Joe’s Pizza at the two and three positions, but we’re at least placing fourth in regards to the morning expulsion. And don’t kid yourself — you do too. Nothing says goodbye to that crappy day that was yesterday than, well, crap, which is why my […]
EARLY WORD: With The Lights Out It’s Less Dangerous
[Click image to activate Internet]
AUTHOR AUTHOR: Q&A W/ Nathan Englander
BY MAVIS LINNEMANN BOOK CRITIC Eight years after the critically-acclaimed short story collection The Relief of Unbearable Urges, Nathan Englander’s first novel, The Ministry of Special Cases, finally hit bookstores on May 1. This harrowing novel takes place during Argentina’s Dirty War (1976-1983), during which the junta government “disappeared” somewhere between 9,000 and 30,000 suspected dissidents and subversives, mostly students and liberals. Kaddish Poznan, hijo de puta (son of a whore) and outcast in the Jewish community, makes his living by erasing the names of wanton Jewish ancestors (pimps, whores and gangsters) from their gravestones on requests from more respectable […]
All Of This Happened While You Were Sleeping
PEACE & NOISE: Patti Smith & Jackson Smith, The Free Library, 6:07 PM [FLICKR] [Photos by JONATHAN VALANIA]
AUTHOR, AUTHOR: Q&A W/ GARY SHTEYNGART
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] BY MAVIS LINNEMANN BOOK CRITIC Gary Shteyngart’s second novel, Absurdistan, is a biting comical ride in the adventures of Misha Vainberg, the 325 lb. son of the 1,239th richest man in Russia. After attending Accidental College, USA, and living in the South Bronx with his hot Latina girlfriend, Misha must return to Russia to see his father. When his father kills an Oklahoma businessman, Misha can no longer obtain a visa from the INS. Misha’s love for New York and multiculturalism take him to the little-known country of Absurdistan, were he’s supposed to get a Belgian […]
Allen Ginsberg Is Blowing Our Frickin’ Mind!
From 1967. Acid much? Rare footage of Allen Ginsberg taken in London 1967 at the dialectics of liberation conference by Iain Sinclair.
BOOKS: Reading Is FUNdamental
No, this isn’t another one of Chaka Fattah’s highbrow schemes for ending gridlock. A picture of people floating across the city on giant tomes can only mean one thing: It’s time for Philadelphia’s annual book burning fest! Standby for for our Philadelphia Book Festival preview, including a Q&A with Absurdistan author Gary Shteygnart and more…
FILM FEST PICKS & PANS: Dante’s Inferno; Wicked Flowers; Book Of The Dead; Severance
BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Heading into its last weekend, the 2007 Philadelphia Film Festival unleashes the big celebrity guns, giving us this year’s American Independent Award winner, Dermot Mulroney. I spent a few minutes this week trying to stoke a friend’s memory on exactly who the very recognizable Mulroney is, and finally had to give up. His specialty in nearly 20 years of film acting has been in supporting roles, often playing ingratiating nice guys who are romance-bait for the female lead. He’s worked with Altman on Kansas City, with Julia Roberts in My Best Friend’s Wedding and most […]
Kurt Vonnegut lived in a modest-sized townhouse on the east side of Manhattan, in a neighborhood inexplicably referred to as Turtle Bay. I know this because I followed him home one day.
BY MICHAEL WEINREB I cannot say what it was, exactly, that possessed me to do this — I had never stalked a celebrity before then, and have not since. It was an act of free will, but at the same time, seemed predestined. This was several years ago, not long after I first moved to New York. I had reached a nadir, tumbled into one of those angst-ridden quarter-life crises which are unavoidable for a man in his 20s. Of course, there were colossally stupid decisions made: I fell in love with a woman who lived with another man; worked […]
KURT VONNEGUT RIP: ‘Everything Was Beautiful, And Nothing Hurt’ — Epitaph From Slaughterhouse Five
NEW YORK — Kurt Vonnegut, the satirical novelist who captured the absurdity of war and questioned the advances of science in darkly humorous works such as “Slaughterhouse-Five” and “Cat’s Cradle,” died Wednesday. He was 84. Vonnegut, who often marveled that he had lived so long despite his lifelong smoking habit, had suffered brain injuries after a fall at his Manhattan home weeks ago, said his wife, photographer Jill Krementz. The author of at least 19 novels, many of them best-sellers, as well as dozens of short stories, essays and plays, Vonnegut relished the role of a social critic. He lectured […]
SIDEWALKING: The Naked And The Def
A MAN IN FULL: Norman Mailer, The Free Library Of Philadelphia, Tuesday Night BY EVA LIAO Full disclosure: I have never read a Norman Mailer book from cover to cover. And the perfunctory excerpts thrown into the textbooks of my contemporary lit college courses don’t really count. I do know, however, that after writing 45 books and providing decades of titillating fodder for the media — co-founder of the Village Voice, winner of multiple Pulitzer Prizes and devotee of Marilyn Monroe, not to mention the whole wife-stabbing incident — the guy has a reputation. He’s kind of like an older, […]
All Of This Happened While You Were Sleeping
THE MAN COMES AROUND: Norman Mailer, The Free Library, Last Night [Photo by Eva Liao]