THE holidays have slowed me down -- happy new year, by the way -- so I'm a bit late on getting this up. Recently I had a story in the LA Times on David "Deadwood" Milch and his new deal to oversee adaptations of Faulkner's novels and stories to HBO.When I began this piece, I thought the idea preposterous: I remember struggling with The Sound and the Fury as a high school student. But as I spoke to … [Read more...]
Christopher Hitchens, R.I.P.
SOMETIMES even when you know something's coming, it knocks the wind out of you when it arrives. That's the way I felt this morning when I opened the paper and saw that Hitchens had succumbed to cancer that virtually every reader knew he had. (Here is the New York Times obit.)I've spent the last few mornings reading an essay or two in his latest collection, Arguably. I don't always, or even often, … [Read more...]
Author Chuck Palahniuk
ODDLY, it was a very pleasant evening the night I met with Chuck Palahniuk in Portland a few years back to discuss his then-new novel, Snuff, over dinner. (The book is not as appetizing.)The Fight Club author has a new novel, Damned. And HERE is my conversation with him.Here's part of my profile:Palahniuk's method is to sniff out such subjects, then pounce. "Things that last in the culture tend to … [Read more...]
Novelist Neal Stephenson
ONE of the smartest, as well as the toughest, writers I've ever encountered in Neal Stephenson, who is somewhere between a cyberpunk writer, a science-fiction novelist and a cultural historian.I met Stephenson, who has a new novel out, in his hometown of Seattle just before the publication of Anathem. HERE is my interview with the author of Snow Crash and The Baroque Triology.One of Anathem's … [Read more...]
The Hell of Freelancing – or is it Purgatory?
FOR some people, going it alone is a blast, and lucrative as well. Advocates of the "free agent nation" see it casual, flexible, energetic -- a way to tap into your real talent and potential.Free agent Reggie JacksonThey say we've moved beyond the stodgy, gray-flannel-suited Organization Man of mid-century, who was all about conformity and corporate loyalty.But for many writers, artists, musicians … [Read more...]
The Perils of the Creative Class
WE were supposed to be entering a laptop wielding, latte-sipping world where the Internet made us all more "connected," weren't we? But the Internet, combined with the bad economy and a restructuring of American life, has led to an erosion of the very creative class it was supposed to invigorate.HERE is my new piece in Salon which looks at the state of the much hyped creative class in 2011. It's … [Read more...]
The Struggle Over Middlebrow
I JUST finished a very intriguing Louis Menand piece on culture critic Dwight Macdonald and the notion of middlebrow. (For those Easterners snorting that I am getting to the story so tardily, let me quote my friend and fellow Angeleno Manohla Dargis, who says that most weeks we get the New Yorker so late it seems to've been delivered by pony express.)The notion of cultural hierarchy -- which works … [Read more...]
Christianity and Tom Perrotta
ONE of my favorite-ever author meetings was a lunch interview with Tom Perrotta around the time of The Abstinence Teacher. (I was in New England and swung to the fringe of Boston to meet him.) The novel's film adaptation was already rolling despite the fact that the book hadn't come out yet -- credit the success of Little Children for that one.The Abstinence Teacher, like his new one, The … [Read more...]
The Return of Brian Selznick
IF you’re the kind of grownup who enjoys smart, well-drawn children’s novels, you might be as excited as I am to hear the Brian Selznick has a new novel, Wonderstruck, coming in September.I met Selznick a few years back on the publication of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, his nearly wordless book about an orphan hiding out in a Parisian train station. (I have another, more recent connection with … [Read more...]
Britain’s "Electric Eden"
THE best of it still sounds as fresh as the day its long-haired practitioners pulled out their mandolins and plugged in the amps: British folk rock is one of the great unsung stories, at least in this country. The new book, Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music, gets at the movement's greatest musicians -- Vashti Bunyan, Richard Thompson, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, Bert Jansch, … [Read more...]