Here’s one for the books — an attractively designed boxing anthology with heart, The Fighter Still Remains, just out from Fore Angels Press and DIBELLA Entertainment. I’m told all profits will go to the Berto Dynasty Foundation to benefit Project Medishare for Haitian earthquake relief. The fact that the book has been brought out by […]

Susan Fleet’s first crime thriller, Absolution, is set in pre-Katrina New Orleans. Homicide detective Frank Renzi takes on a serial killer who preys on women. (Click for the Kindle edition.) Now why would a cultivated classical musician like Fleet — she plays a mean baroque trumpet and also happens to be a feminist music historian […]

Blue Wind Press published Blade Runner, A Movie, by William S. Burroughs, for the first time in 1979. Since then it has gone through two editions and I don’t know how many printings. The latest edition has just been released in paperback, beautifully designed by Blue Wind publisher George Mattingly. He notes that Blade Runner, […]

Been meaning to mention the New York premiere of Bach & friends, the full-length documentary by Michael Lawrence, at Symphony Space last Sunday. After the screening, several of the musicians from the film gave virtuoso performances for a deeply appreciative audience that filled the 760-seat Peter Jay Sharp Theatre almost to capacity. The combo concert […]

I just finished reading a juicy crime novel, Grace, set in the Bay Area in the summer of 1972. It’s about the murder of the title character, a race track worker whose body is fished out of San Francisco Bay. She was beautiful, white, and promiscuous — and she was in love with a black […]

Definitely an aw gee! moment. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

This video experiment, first posted by realitystudio.org, was recorded on Dec. 21, 1971, as I wrote there, in William S. Burroughs‘ London flat at 8 Duke St. The filmmaker Antony Balch, who lived downstairs, brought his movie projector up to the flat, along with the unfinished footage of Bill & Tony, a movie he’d been […]

It’s so secret, We Can’t Tell You. That’s the catchy headline on today’s New York Times editorial about “relentless efforts” to continue the aaaeulc‘s legacy of clandestine eavesdropping. If an Islamic charity is “subjected to warrantless surveillance” by the National Security Agency and is “declared a sponsor of terrorism,” what happens when it challenges those […]

Algren was the author of more than a dozen books. I’m betting that his two most famous novels — The Man With the Golden Arm and A Walk on the Wild Side, one a tragedy and the other a comedy — will last longer than any of the novels by Mailer, Vidal, Updike, Cheever, Kerouac, […]

Robert Parry said it for me. The bottom line is this: When the American Right is offended, the “corrections” come fast and are sweeping, even in highly dubious situations. Sometimes heads roll. But when the American Left feels aggrieved, the “corrections” are slow and grudging, often very narrow in scope and still misleading. Nobody is […]

“Symphony Space has given us a wonderful present for Sebastian’s 325th birthday,” says Mike Lawrence, whose terrific documentary, BACH & friends, will have its New York premiere at Symphony Space’s Peter Jay Sharp Theatre on May 16. The Sunday evening premiere, beginning at 7:30 p.m., will be followed by a screening of complete performances of […]

This appeared two weeks ago: (Click to read) This appeared a decade ago: (Click to read) Which pretty much says it all. Postscript: March 22 — Well, well … no it doesn’t. The Vienna Philharmonic has permanently appointed its first woman concertmaster. Will wonders never cease? EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

When I saw The Hurt Locker back in August, I thought, “Finally a grunt’s-eye view of the war in Iraq. And not so gung-ho either.” Leave it to my staff of thousands to straighten me out. Bill Osborne wrote in an e-mail message, “I thought it was a subtle form of American war propaganda that […]

Click logo for mugshots and flowcharts: There is abundant evidence that war crimes were committed by the Bush Administration. … The question is very simple: Will any officials of the Bush Administration who are responsible for the “war on terror” be indicted and held accountable for those crimes? — War Criminals Watch If the Obama […]

Perversity Think Tank A Seminar on the Concept of Perversity by Supervert 32C Inc. Click photo to watch video: EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Bach on the organ? Of course. On the piano? Certainly. On the cello? Naturally. On the violin? Sure. But Bach on the banjo? The ukelele? The mandolin? How about the glass harp? Or the clarinet, the guitar, and the double bass. And let’s not forget a cappella. You hear them all — brilliantly filmed and […]

Good question. It’s the title of a new book, just published in South Africa by Dye Hard Press. Although Sinclair Beiles was a prolific poet, novelist, and playwright, “there is very little information available” about him and even less about his work, co-editor Gary Cummiskey writes in the introduction. Beiles is best known for his […]