Archives for March 2009

Nelson Algren, most quotable of writers, was born 100 years ago today. I’ve posted many items about him over the past few years, including what his friends had to say: Roger Groening, for instance, and Kurt Vonnegut and Studs Terkel. Some of my own comments and memories, too. A few years ago, I mentioned that […]

“As boring to watch as a space walk,” a friend said about Barack Obama’s latest round of media appearances, including the best one Sunday night, on “60 Minutes.” Paul Krugman, whose wisdom I also trust, is worse than bored this morning. He’s filled “with a sense of despair.” Krugman has been feeling that way for […]

So now it’s the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Folded. Not completely. There will be a much-reduced online version. But the old P-I is gone from print. Only the name remains. What I said when the Rocky Mountain News folded goes double for the P-I, which helped me survive as a freelance many years ago by buying stories […]

“Watchmen,” the movie, caused a stir at the box office when its opening weekend nabbed $55 million, the highest opening gross of the year and third-highest March opening ever. It’s a shame that none of the money will trickle down to the artist Malcolm Mc Neill, whose image of the Mayan Death God (right) in […]

Henry Kisor has posted on his news blog an item called The ‘Inept Blob’ vs. the ‘Inhuman Turd,’ about the nasty friction between the novelist Nelson Algren (a literary great, in my opinion) and the editor William Targ (a not-so-great, in Algren’s opinion). Which reminds me: Dan Simon’s Seven Stories Press has just published “Algren […]