Novelist Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) is receiving some well-deserved media attention these days thanks to Anthony Minghella’s opulent Hollywood version of The Talented Mr. Ripley. The film has much to recommend it, but it sorely lacks Highsmith’s pitch-black humor and ...
Bob Zmuda's memoir Andy Kaufman Revealed! is both invaluable and exasperating. As Kaufman's writer and fellow provocateur, Zmuda was involved in all of his best known outrages: he served as referee (or ringside "lawyer") for the inter-gender wrestling matches, ...
Mary McCarthy’s first novel plunges into the psyche of a young married woman in the 1930's who is starting an affair with a Young Man, planning to drop hints of it to her girlfriends and then reveal all to ...
Beth Kephart has chosen an elusive theme for Into the Tangle of Friendship. "The more we let others into our lives," she writes, "the safer we become and also the more endangered." Her prose style, like the subject of ...
Suggested reading: Intimate Nights: The Golden Age of New York Cabaret (1992), James Gavin Discovering Great Singers of Classic Pop: A New Listener's Guide (1992), Roy Hemming, David Hajdu (Editor) Jazz Singing: America's Great ...
Mekons I Have Been to Heaven and Back Ever since there have been rock critics, there have been critics' bands. The Velvet Underground set the standard: their every move was met with an avalanche of good press, ...
Ronald Sukenick is one of the leading lights of postmodern literature in the United States. He was a founding member of the Fiction Collective, a famed alternative press started in 1974 and still thriving. His first novel was published ...
In a world where many a former country diva (Faith, Shania) is deserting her roots for pop superstardom, while yesterday's grand dames (Dolly) seem to be embracing their past glories as fast as their record sales decline, Trisha Yearwood ...
In their five brief years, The Clash left behind a peerless body of work. Sweeping, ambitious and constantly evolving, their music encapsulated a short history of rock and roll. At first, they were a crude and caterwauling garage band, ...
