Counter-Culture Colophon
On Barney Rosset and the history of Grove Press
All Essays
Just Like a Woman
The shadow of the culture wars falls over these books, and Jane Austen becomes both the rescued and the rescuer.
Letter from London: Lost in the Supermarket
Searching for a political meaning in the London "shopping riots."
A Portis Reader
Not to mention that if you have to call a thing "True," it’s probably not.
Perfectly Plausible Worlds
He is both a post-national and post-postmodern writer on the one hand and quite simply a page-turner on the other.
Quotidian Stories
When asked which I might recommend that may have passed readers' notice, I settled on work by Jill Ciment and Jane Gardam.
Paperback Writers: Rudyard Kipling
Kipling is a fundamentally dark writer.
Books That Made Us: Charlotte’s Web
Sometimes a book comes along and you feel so lucky that somebody pressed it into your hands to read that you read it right away.
Still Hungry
On Ben Lerner's "Leaving the Atocha Station."
Letter from London: Soot and Ash
Once you begin to look for influences, they seem to be everywhere — in the weather, in politics, in literature and art.
Cut and Paste and Run
So, I find myself wondering, what am I going to do about the man who I think plagiarized me?
Wunderkind
on Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s unlikely career in television.
In the Charles Wright Museum
All around me were Charles’s lines and poems: his deck, the shrubs and flowers, the weather and hillside, and the Pacific below were all characters.
Year of the Fire Cock
The book is so unrelentingly erotic and explicit that it could, if you're not careful, cause chafing.
Exile on Fleet Street
Today, the mesmeric hold that Rupert Murdoch came to exercise over British public life has been broken.
Future Tense
"Yes," said a Frenchman. "We have this silly theory in France that our authors should be able to eat."