Reviews

William Kennedy’s Long Dry Spell Ends with Chango’s Beads and Two-Toned Shoes

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Along the way there will be a duel, a failed assassination attempt, gun-running, Santeria rituals, kidnapping, torture, scorching sex, and, finally, a coveted interview with Fidel Castro. The storytelling has the irresistible pull of a riptide.
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Lists

Seven Reasons Why Alexandre Dumas Will Never Die

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If every smart person’s goal in life is to die broke, then Dumas was an unqualified success. But while a lesser man would have bemoaned the cruelties of fate that left him penniless on his deathbed, Dumas had this to say about death as it approached him in 1870: “I shall tell her a story, and she will be kind to me.”
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Curiosities

OWS and the Press

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In Person

The Eclectic Reading List at Occupy Wall Street

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Everyone knows that you are what you read. So to learn more about the protesters who have been occupying Wall Street for the past three weeks, it makes sense to find out what they're reading.
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On Poetry

A Poet Laureate from the Proletariat: An Appreciation of Philip Levine

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I came upon a book of poems that proved to me that art can be made from absolutely anything, from a night-shift job at Chevy Gear & Axle or a job picking Gravenstein apples.
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Curiosities

The Slow Cookers

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Screening Room

A Documentary for Our Times: The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

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As the divisions of class and race continue to harden and widen in this country, I say we could use more leaders like Stokely Carmichael and Angela Davis, with their beautiful, hard-earned fury.
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In Person

The German Solution: Saving Books by Keeping Them Expensive

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There seemed to be no end to the variety of bookshops in Cologne. But they all had one thing in common: they were thriving.
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The Millions Interview

The Millions Interview: Geoff Dyer on the London Riots, the Great War, and the Gray Lady

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I always have faith in this idea that if I remain honest and open about my own confusion, the blurriness of my impressions – it's not because I'm short-witted or stupid – the chances are those feelings will be shared by other people.
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Reviews

Ham Steaks and Manstarch: Nicholson Baker Returns to the Sex Beat

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House of Holes is a carefully constructed contrivance, a vehicle for exploring a fantasy that could exist only in a country that's both obsessed with sex and deeply conflicted about it. In short, it's every pubescent boy's wet dream. But is it good fiction?
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Lists

DMV Redux: An Expanded List of Writers Who Met Death By Motor Vehicle

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Once, during a game of "20 Questions," O'Hara was asked, What do you fear most? He answered, "Living beyond 40."
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Staff Picks

Staff Pick: The Real State of America Atlas

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Where The Real State of America Atlas truly shines is in its demolition of the notion – the enduring fantasy – that America is a land of equal opportunity.
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Curiosities

Having trouble falling asleep at night?

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From the Newsstand

The Art and Science of Collaboration

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When someone reads your rough draft, it's like letting them see you half-dressed.  It's about arriving at a level of intellectual comfort – or having faith in the process.  In a successful collaboration, both people feel like they did less than half the work.
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Lists

D.M.V.: An Incomplete List of Writers Who Met Death by Motor Vehicle

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Is it my imagination, or do an inordinate number of writers die in motor vehicle accidents?
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Curiosities

NYPL Gets Trippy

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Essays

Geoff Dyer, Gate-Crasher and Dragonfly

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It was as though I'd been drawn to the Phillips de Pury auction house to visually complete the circuit of learning begun by Dyer's revelatory writings.  Which is not to say I wound up agreeing with everything Dyer had to say. Far from it.
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Curiosities

Dick Wimmer is dead! Long live Dick Wimmer!

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