Michael Chabon’s luminous 1988 coming-of-age novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, was one of the auspicious literary debuts of the last dozen or so years. Written in an assured and full-throated lyrical voice, the book began life as an MFA ...
By T. Coraghessan Boyle This book was written after its writer, Thomas John Boyle, became T. Coraghessan Boyle, but before he morphed into merely T.C. Boyle. Some online sites suggest that Coraghessan was a middle name made ...
Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of Film Noir analyzes how film noir became a genre and, unlike some other sources on noir, focuses on the role that B movies played in its development. Arthur Lyons is ...
Bliss Broyard’s collection of short stories, My Father, Dancing, is so splendidly nuanced that one is tempted to overstate the book’s low-keyed charms. In this era of blockbuster bestsellers and publishing "sensations," the small pleasures of Broyard’s stories are ...
David S. Ware is one of the most powerful saxophonists currently working. His technique goes far beyond the sometimes-contrived overblowing of Charles Gayle or the squiggly abstractions of Sabir Mateen or Daniel Carter. He is possessed of a deep ...
Wonderful Town was the second of Leonard Bernstein's trio of 'New York' musicals begun in 1944 with On The Town and completed with 1957's West Side Story. If it is the least well remembered then the fault does not ...
Jean Douchet’s lavishly illustrated coffee-table book, French New Wave, is an eye-popping tribute to the movement that gained worldwide prominence in 1959 with the release of two groundbreaking motion pictures: Fran�ois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless. ...
Last Things is an ambitious novel that touches on big themes - the poetry of science and physics; our millennial preoccupation with the end of time; correlations between creativity and insanity; and the allure of mysticism and pagan spirituality. ...
An opening blast of brass for "Million Dollar Secret" lets you know instantly that swing rules with the Johnny Nocturne Band, but it's a specialized niche of the swing genre. Given the name "jump-swing" by Decca Records in the ...
First things first: this album's title, The Big Black, has absolutely nothing to do with Steve Albini's noise- and rage-fueled mid-80s pummeling device. No covers of "Jordan, Minnesota" here, sorry. Orange Goblin is a stoner metal band, with no ...
