1980s New York City certainly wasn’t tidy or coherent. It wasn’t one scene, one genre, one politics, one mood, one glamorous downtown myth lit just right for later documentaries. It was too loud for that. Too broke. Too ambitious. Too stylish. Too neglected. Too funny. Too angry. Too wired. Too full of brilliant ideas, terrible…
A lot of people know Vladimir Nabokov simply as the guy who wrote Lolita, a book that many people who haven’t read it have a strong opinion about. Of course he has a much different reputation amongst big literature fans who have actually read that book and more. But it’s still a complicated one because…
I think Kenyan literature is one of those traditions people might approach with their shoulders already slightly tensed. You can almost hear the imaginary assignment sheet rustling in the background: colonialism, language, Mau Mau, independence, betrayal, disillusionment, discuss. And to be sure, all of that matters. A lot. You cannot seriously talk about Kenyan literature…
What is dread, exactly? It’s not the scream. The scream is easy. The scream announces itself. It kicks the door open, points at the monster, and makes sure nobody leaves confused about the mood. Dread is sneakier than that. It’s the air before the scream. The hallway before the door opens. The bassline that keeps…
There is a particular kind of reader who sees a thousand-page postmodern novel and thinks, Excellent. I was hoping to lose contact with ordinary time for a while. The rest of us may wonder whether the book comes with a bookmark, a glossary, and maybe a physical therapist. Postmodern fiction has a reputation, and to…
After my Best Books About Musicians post, I got to thinking about albums about musicians that feel almost like books. Some albums are great because the songs are great. A record does not need a cast list, a tragic backstory, and a symbolic talisman in track seven to justify its existence. Sometimes twelve strong songs…
Music fans usually know the name Iggy Pop, but they often know it as shorthand. The Stooges guy. The shirtless menace. The “Lust for Life” guy. The patron saint of self-destruction who somehow lived long enough to become respectable enough to narrate luxury car ads without the universe collapsing. But once you actually get into…
Avant-garde jazz and free jazz are two terms that seem almost designed to be off-putting, to make a casual or jazz-curious listener immediately think “no thanks, won’t be bothering with that.” As someone who’s listened to a lot of this music for many years now, I want to demystify a bit. For a long time,…
Thomas Pynchon has one of those literary reputations that can feel intimidating to the point of discouraging readers away rather than encouraging them in. The paranoia. The entropy. The conspiracy webs. The weird names. The historical digressions. The songs (my god, the songs!). The acronyms. The sense that somewhere around page 240 a light bulb,…
It goes without saying that any guide to Icelandic literature has to tip its hat to the sagas. They are the deep foundation: hard-faced, funny in a dry and slightly alarming way, full of feuds, law, revenge, family pride, and people making decisions that are clearly terrible even before anyone picks up an axe. They…