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Happy Birthday to Me! The Rake is the oldest continuously published periodical in the English language, but it didn’t get to this venerable and celebrated position without sacrifices! You remember the Cedars of Lebanon? They provided the reams of paper that became our massive “Top Priests” issue of May, 501 AD. Atlantis? The island defaulted … Read more

At the heart of this new-in-paperback novel by the author of The Joy Luck Club lies the terrible fragility of memory-and how time robs us piece by piece of our own past. Her main characters are instantly recognizable Tan types. American-born writer Ruth Young realizes it’s time to mend fences with Alzheimer’s-beset mother, LuLing, before … Read more

When Michael Gordon uses the word “hero” to describe the 12 stylists he profiles, he’s not kidding. And although he’s not trying to place his subjects on the same level as, say, the firefighters of 9/11, they’re certainly at the top of the heap when it comes to the top of your head. There’s Kenneth … Read more

Right out of the gate, with her early novels The Bluest Eye and Sula, it was clear that Toni Morrison was a writer to be reckoned with, capable of powerfully articulating the rage and despair of black women trying to get by in a society permeated with both racism and sexism. Her big-league status was … Read more

If he were the protagonist in one of his own crime novels, Andrew Vachss might be unbelievable: A hard-as-nails lawyer, grizzled and sporting an eyepatch, who’ll only take cases defending child victims of sexual abuse. But his singleminded, furious crusade is for real, and it informs not just his writing but his whole life. Vachss … Read more

Northfield native Siri Hustvedt first caught our attention with her 1996 novel The Enchantment of Lily Dahl, a self-consciously quirky noir set in a small Minnesota town populated by a ditzy femme-fatale heroine and a cast of flaky eccentrics.What I Loved, her third book, chronicles the quarter-century friendship between a painter and an art historian … Read more

Sophomore slump is often nothing more than the indifference of critics and fans who are still digging the first record. Macy Gray got about as big as anyone can get with her 1999 debut, On How Life Is. The freak queen of rock ’n’ soul combined a Jimi Hendrix sense of style with a vocal … Read more

This is the Bristol duo that almost singlehandedly invented the late-90s genre du jour, “trip-hop”—meaning atmospheric, heavily remixed club music that brought together elements of electronica, turntablism, rock ’n’ roll, film soundtrack, and torch song. You probably remember Geoff Barrow and Beth Gibbons best for “Sour Times,” a wonderful, sepia-toned single that hit the airwaves … Read more

He was the Hendrix of jazz, was Charlie Parker. The living genius who flamed out young, so consumed by his music that he could practice 15 hours a day if he wasn’t strung out on junk. He helped forge a new form of jazz—bebop, in this case—and improvised riffs on his saxophone that fellow musicians … Read more

Terry Gilliam’s work had always had anarchy deep in its heart, and more than once anarchy has overwhelmed the project entirely. Certainly, our favorite hometown Python can say with some justification that his failures are more interesting than a lot of director’s successes. There is, in fact, a whole cottage industry devoted to chronicling his … Read more