I suppose I’d be a better writer if I could hold my liquor. After all, plenty of U.S. winners of the Nobel Prize for literature—from Sinclair Lewis to William Faulkner to Eugene O’Neill to Ernest Hemingway—were friendly with the bottle. Liquor as a literary lubricant dates back to the authors of the U.S. Constitution. According … Read more
It’s the world’s largest freshwater port. But when the steel, timber, and frozen pizza industries go to hell, the city is screwed. Or maybe not. How did our favorite northern town go from being “the state’s largest white ghetto” to being its most popular destination? It’s all about converting to the post-industrial future that awaits … Read more
After the Coke bottle, the most enduring icon of the 20th century might be the mushroom cloud. Unlocking the secrets of the atom is science’s crowning achievement, equating matter with energy, and discovering a cheap and limitless source of power. On the other hand, it represents the all-too-possible destruction of life as we know it … Read more
It was a very snowy January when I ran away to Prague. The family I stayed with lived in one of a cluster of monolithic stone apartment buildings on the outskirts of the city. The grey air outside the buildings smelled of coal and smog, and the air inside smelled of tea and cabbage. Each … Read more
I recently spent a sad evening in a basement in South Minneapolis. An acquaintance was seeking subsidised legal advice about the custody of his children. He had found it pretty difficult uncovering a voluntary agency able to offer advice to men on such matters. But now here he was with six other unfortunates waiting his … Read more
Let’s All Kill Constance is a welcome change from Ray Bradbury’s most recent m.o. Whereas in recent years he’s stuck to short stories, this one’s a full-length novel, and an offbeat satire of noir fiction. Bradbury’s best known, of course, for intensely allegorical, morally resonant science fiction like Fahrenheit 451. Constance follows two previous mysteries … Read more
The Krazy Kat cartoons, first published in newspapers in 1913, are among the very first examples of high art emerging out of the comic-strip format. On one level, Herriman simply drew endless variations on the same few themes, with funny-talking animals (“why, there’s a lotta l’il mices got bigga burdins than you”) getting bonks on … Read more
Published to coincide with Mailer’s 80th birthday, Spooky Art gathers more than a half-century of essays, forming a bookend with his seminal 1959 collection Advertisements For Myself. As its subtitle implies, it’s intended as his definitive statement on the craft. But the sheer scope of the 350-page book means it’s of wider interest than your … Read more
Baker first made a name for himself in the late 80s, with a series of short but dense novels that mapped the detail of daily life right down to the aglets at the ends of your shoelaces. Normally, this kind of observational detail is the territory of serious psychedelic drug users—but Baker is nothing if … Read more
Sesame Street doesn’t enjoy the untouchable status it once did. In recent years, the TV show has come in for some mean academic scru-tiny that finds it as ineffective (in its alleged “educational” programming) as it is cloying. It certainly didn’t help to lose head Muppeteer Jim Henson, who died back in 1990. It also … Read more