FOLKS, here is my debut as an LA Times freelancer. i'll be doing regular film writing for them.the story is about the prolific crime writer donald westlake, and the generally poor job Hollywood has done handling his talents. there are lots of European adaptations i didnt have room to get into -- i hear great things about costa-gavras' "Le Couperet," made from the novel "the ax." (the novel and … [Read more...]
Archives for January 2009
JAZZ PHOTOG WILLIAM CLAXTON
well i plan to run a full set of links to my old LATIMES stories somewhere on this blog, but in the meantime i've been going through a serious jazz revival over the holidays, playing a lot of monk and billie holiday and lester young in particular... it's gotten me thinking about one of the truly coolest people i ever had the pleasure of knowing in roughly 20 years writing about artists of all … [Read more...]
MAN MEN, RICHARD YATES AND MY DEBUT IN KENTUCKY
....here is a piece i wrote for my good friend david daley, who is an editor at the Louisville paper and runs the cool fiction site "five chapters" ... he gave me chance to get into my love of overlooked aspects of the early postwar period... of course there is much else to say about those years. i wish i'd had room to get into the tradition of social criticism, on topics like alienation and "the … [Read more...]
FIRST POST: BACK FROM THE DEAD + NYT
Hi Gang, I'm glad to report that after a period of enforced silence I'm back with a few stories I'm proud of.Here's the first, a New York Times piece on a 70s cult novel called "Ecotopia."The novel is not as well written or nuanced as Ursula Le Guin's "The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia," which by coincidence i reread at about the same time (that is tough company)... but it's a "novel of ideas" … [Read more...]