THE GUARDIAN: Every fantasy reflects the place and time that produced it. If The Lord of the Rings is about the rise of fascism and the trauma of the second world war, and Game of Thrones, with its cynical realpolitik and cast of precarious, entrepreneurial characters is a fairytale of neoliberalism, then Dune is the paradigmatic fantasy of the Age of Aquarius. Its concerns – environmental stress, human potential, altered states of consciousness and the developing countries’ revolution against imperialism – are blended together into an era-defining vision of personal and cosmic transformation. Books read differently as the world […]
TRUTH & CONSEQUENCES: Q&A w/ Marc Maron
Photo by Larry Hirshowitz UPDATE: Marc Maron on Fresh Air BY JONATHAN VALANIA Marc Maron pretty much wrote the book on how not to write the book — the book on how to win friends and influence people, how to succeed in showbiz without really trying, how to enjoy harmless recreational drugs like cocaine responsibly. Whatever his books about those topics (in truth, there are no books like that, but stick with me I’m going somewhere with this) tell you to do, do the exact opposite. Unless you want to find yourself on the far side of 40, bottomed out […]
THE BOOKS YOU SHOULD READ BEFORE YOU DIE
BY LUKE HOPELY I really don’t know much about Barry Hannah, and after reading Airships I was really pissed the fuck off about this fact. I know that he is a Southern writer and his name is bounced around with the likes of Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor on his book covers. I know that he wrote books from the 70s until his death in 2010. He wrote Airships in the 70s while going through the obligatory alcoholic phase all great writers seem to enter, although some never leave (looking at you Hemingway). Most of importantly I know Barry Hannah […]
THE BOOKS YOU SHOULD READ BEFORE YOU DIE
BY LUKE ROBERT HOPELY Cormac McCarthy writes spectral Western epics that both examine and embody (and, some would say, revel in) the savage beauty of man’s inhumanity to man. There are many Cormac McCarthy books you should read before you die, but if you only read one, make it Blood Meridian. This book does two things, and it does them with the same pitiless efficacy that makes his prose crackle. First, it gets its point across, and that point is how goddamn awful humans are, how we lust lust for violence, how we always have and always will. McCarthy […]
BOOKS: Infinite Guest
Artwork by TOMMASO PINCIO If David Foster Wallace were alive today, would the famously introverted author be flattered to see himself on the big screen, or horrified at the commodification of his very identity? James Ponsoldt’s new film The End of the Tour recreates five days that the late author David Foster Wallace spent traveling around the Midwest with Rolling Stone Magazine writer David Lipsky around 1996, shortly after Wallace’s critically acclaimed novel Infinite Jest was published. In the film, the two men have a number of philosophical conversations about writing, life, sex, and fame — kind of like if […]
IN MEMORIAM: Novelist Kent Haruf 1943-2014
BY MIKE WALSH I spent a few years living in a small town in the northeastern plains of Colorado. That is also the same area where Kent Haruf set all of his novels, so I’ve felt an affinity with the man and his work. His novels remind me of that time in my life, those places, and the people who live in that area of the country. I’m also a fan of Haruf because his novels are just plain great. Haruf died on November 30 of liver disease. He was 71. All of Haruf’s novels are set in the fictional […]
REWIND 2014: The Year In Questions And Answers
If armies run on their stomachs, blogs run on their big fucking mouths. We’re no exception. But we’d like to think that, on a good day, we put all that hot air to good use when interrogating visiting dignitaries in advance of their triumphant arrival into the City Of Brotherly Love. We’ve never pretended to have all the answers but we do know all the right questions. And we’ve never settled for easy answers to hard questions. Sometimes feelings get hurt and sometimes new connections are made. Sometimes painful truths emerge and sometimes we actually learn something. And sometimes we […]
PAINT IT BLACK: Q&A With Paul Trynka, Author of “BRIAN JONES: The Making Of The Rolling Stones”
BY JONATHAN VALANIA A candid conversation with former MOJO editor Paul Trynka [pictured, below right] — author of IGGY POP: Open Up And Bleed and DAVID BOWIE: Star Man — about his new bio, BRIAN JONES: The Making Of The Rolling Stones. (The British version has a much edgier, and dare I say it Stonsier title, SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL: The Birth Of The Rolling Stones & The Death Of Brian Jones. Guess Random House thinks the devil doesn’t get his due in America. We’re inclined to disagree, but that’s a conversation for another time.) DISCUSSED: Blowjobs, pills, genius, […]
BOOKS: Why Lena Dunham’s Memoir Is Everything That’s Wrong With Girls Like Lena Dunham
BY STEPHANIE SHAMP In the pursuit of not wasting my time, I generally only read memoirs that are: A. Recommended by a close friend B. Written past the age of 40 C. Dark with funny moments or funny with dark moments D. Profoundly moving I’m sorry to report that Not That Kind of Girl meets none of my basic requirements. Fact is, Lena Dunham’s life is just not that interesting. Born to two artists and raised in what is never directly said but implied to be a middle-class home with her younger sister in New York, Dunham is the […]
BOOKS: Q&A With Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist David Kinney, Author Of The Dylanologists
EDITOR’S NOTE: This originally posted on July 17th 2014 BY JONATHAN VALANIA Sometimes I think Dylanology — the obsessive study and consumption of all things Bob — is the new (and improved) Scientology. Think about it: Both are non-denominational pop cults formed in the latter half of the 20th Century that rally around a charismatic leader and rake in boatloads of believer money. Both have celebrity acolytes and promise extraordinary insight. But there is one vast and crucial difference, as vast and crucial as the difference between The Old Testament and The New Testament: L. Ron Hubbard wrote Battlefield Earth […]
BLUE JEANS AND MOON BEAMS: The Early Word On Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice
WALL STREET JOURNAL: One film, two masters. That’s the easiest, most direct way to describe the power behind “Inherent Vice,” the much-anticipated stoner noir film that had its world premiere Saturday night as the centerpiece of the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center. The film is loaded with all sorts of familiar Hollywood faces, but the biggest stars of the project are its director and screenwriter, celebrated auteur Paul Thomas Anderson, and the author whose novel served as source material, great American novelist Thomas Pynchon. The two were the buzz of the red carpet Saturday night, even as the likes of stars Joaquin Phoenix, Josh […]
BOOKS: Tied To The Whipping Post
BY ED KING ROCK EXPERT What makes a band a band and not just a group of musicians who play music together? Jazz musicians often play together, but they rarely form bands. Supporting musicians flow in and out behind a clear band leader, the way they did behind Miles Davis, helping to drive his many stylistic permutations. What’s the value of a band, why do people bother? In rock ‘n roll, countless collections of musicians undeniably exist as a band despite barely qualifying as musicians. Alan Paul’s oral history of the Allman Brothers Band, One Way Out, is a […]
BOOKS: Q&A With Joel Selvin, Author Of HERE COMES THE NIGHT: The Dark Soul Of Bert Berns & The Dirty Business Of Rhythm & Blues
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Bert Berns, the greatest songwriter/producer you never heard of, was not long for this world. Born with a congenital heart defect, he was told he would not live to see 21, and though he defied prevailing medical opinion, he was dead before he turned 39. Berns [PICTURED, ABOVE RIGHT didn’t start working in the music business until he was 30, but over the course of the next eight years he wrote and/or produced some of the greatest singles of all time: The Isley Brothers’ “Twist And Shout,” The Drifters’ “Under The Boardwalk,” Solomon Burke [PICTURED, ABOVE […]