David Fear
"There ought to be more books about John Cassavettes", posits author Tom Charity at the outset of his own contribution to Cassavettian literature, John Cassavettes: Lifeworks. It's a rather odd way to start off a "critical biography" (Charity's words), ...
Phil Freeman
Every few years, some writer issues a flaming-arrow diatribe against some aspect or another of rock ’n’ roll. One of the great early ones was Jon Savage and Julie Burchill’s The Boy Looked At Johnny, simultaneously a justification for ...
Mark Jennett
Noel Coward is best remembered today for his plays - Hay Fever, Private Lives, Design for Living among others. However, he was also a prolific composer of operetta (Bitter Sweet) and material for revues. A prolific songwriter who wrote ...
David Fear
When highbrow pundits, scholars and the thoroughly misguided AFI listmakers inevitably catalogue the "final word" on great American filmmakers, it wouldn't be surprising if Abel Ferrara's name was mistakenly left off the roster. The missing link between cinema's art ...
Anne Sheridan
Side Effect is in the tradition of scientifically or professionally realistic thrillers, a la Michael Crichton/John Grisham, this time set in the stressed out fast-paced world of pharmaceutical research. Sandra Feder has a background in research chemistry, allowing her ...
Dorcas Saunders
The Year of Jubilo, Howard Bahr's even-handed story of the year immediately following the end of the Civil War--before the full impact of reconstruction--is not only refreshing in the author’s resistance to continuing the fight between the North and ...
Anne Sheridan
Dublin celebrated Bloomsday 2001 with four days of literary readings hosted in civic buildings by Dublin Corporation. Writers' festivals are based on a strange concept. Film festivals or drama festivals celebrate art forms which are intended to ...
Bob Wake
Journey to Portugal offers the pleasures of an engaging travel book coupled with the deeper enjoyment of sharing an excursion with a world-class storyteller. Written several years prior to his acclaimed 1995 novel Blindness, Saramago’s Journey to Portugal is ...
Bob Wake
How many struggling writers wouldn’t give their eyeteeth to be in Padgett Powell’s predicament? Since the publication of Edisto, his highly praised 1984 debut novel about a young boy’s eccentric upbringing in the Deep South, Powell has been in ...
Phil Freeman
One of the most painful truths in American publishing is that genre fiction is better than literary fiction. There are two basic reasons for this. One is the market angle: detective stories outsell “quality” novels at an exponential rate. ...
