{"id":1128,"date":"2009-04-05T07:31:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-05T14:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2009\/04\/kicking-ass-with-evan-wright.html"},"modified":"2009-04-05T07:31:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-05T14:31:00","slug":"kicking-ass-with-evan-wright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2009\/04\/kicking-ass-with-evan-wright.html","title":{"rendered":"Kicking Ass with Evan Wright"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_yrL6yfubw8g\/SdjQzRQLaCI\/AAAAAAAAAMM\/4QuC1HES_AQ\/s1600-h\/dancing.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_yrL6yfubw8g\/SdjQzRQLaCI\/AAAAAAAAAMM\/4QuC1HES_AQ\/s320\/dancing.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"><\/a><\/p>\n<div>SO far the most acclaimed first-person account of the current Iraq War is &#8220;Generation Kill,&#8221; in which LA journalist evan wright embedded himself in a marine battalion quite different from the soldiers who fought the vietnam war.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>today i have an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/features\/books\/la-ca-evan-wright5-2009apr05,0,1338489.story?page=2\">LA Times piece<\/a> on wright, who i sat down with recently. a very serious, sincere and complicated dude who makes the case (both in his work and in conversation) for print journalism. (i got the un-macho ohioian in a very dazed state, just off a plane from japan, and he seemed to slowly reorient as his espresso kicked in.)<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>anyway i knew i was going to like wright&#8217;s new book &#8220;hella nation&#8221; &#8212; chronicles of neo-nazis, would-be porn stars, a runaway agent &#8212; when he distanced himself from hunter s. thompson and instead quoted the godlike a.j. liebling.\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>the book collects pieces wright wrote when he was &#8220;ambassador to the underbelly,&#8221; as his dad once put it.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>one of my favorite pieces in the book is about taxi-dance places in LA, originally edited by renowned editor janet duckworth, then at the LA weekly. the piece is a masterpiece of empathy and historical vision.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Photo credit: Flickr user <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/viajante\/2817634001\/\">Viajante<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SO far the most acclaimed first-person account of the current Iraq War is &#8220;Generation Kill,&#8221; in which LA journalist evan wright embedded himself in a marine battalion quite different from the soldiers who fought the vietnam war. today i have an LA Times piece on wright, who i sat down with recently. a very serious, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35,523,27,524,30],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-books","7":"category-evan-wright","8":"category-journalism","9":"category-liebling","10":"category-los-angeles","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}