Reviews

"I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined)" by Chuck Klosterman

July 9th, 2013

Chuck Klosterman is a grownup now.

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"Joyland" by Stephen King

June 27th, 2013

In the world of Stephen King, there are many voices. He is known of course for his classic horror, books like Carrie, Salem’s Lot, and The Shining. He is also famous for writing epic tomes that span space and time, such as The Stand, and It. He even dabbles in whatever The Dark Tower series is—steampunk western noir with a splash of fantasy and science fiction.

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'Lionel Asbo: State of England' by Martin Amis

August 28th, 2012

Martin Amis’ new novel, Lionel Asbo: State of England, might as well have a big red target printed across its very fetching dust jacket. Amis, one of the bright literary lights of Eighties England, now endures more flak than adulation, seemingly emerging to make one more wrong-headed comment, or signify his disconnection with modern times.

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Rock Icons Revisited: Two New Books About Reggie and Fred

August 17th, 2012

A buck-toothed African and a pasty-skinned Brit walk into a bar... While the mind conjures stereotypical images of two diametrically-opposed figures, in fact the similarities between these particular men are stunning.

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"That’s How I Roll" by Andrew Vachss

May 9th, 2012

Reading Andrew Vachss is similar to listening to Ray Wylie Hubbard fused with Nick Cave. It’s brutal, grindhouse and poetic. Laying an atmosphere of the down trodden, harmed and misshapen. He writes about characters who some like to pretend do not exist. Their actions are sometimes hard to digest, but they’re plausible. He’s written more than twenty books (his Burke and Cross characters being his most popular), and deviled in comic books, essays for the glossies, and big newspapers.

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"The Wind Through the Keyhole" by Stephen King

April 27th, 2012

Seven years after the publication of the ostensibly last book in his Dark Tower series, Stephen King revisits the epic, fully realized universe his fans have been following for decades. Well, sort of.

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'Butterfly in the Typewriter: The Tragic Life of John Kennedy Toole and the Remarkable Story of A Confederacy of Dunces' by Cory MacLauchlin

April 11th, 2012

If you didn't know already, it's in the book's subtitle: the tale of John Kennedy Toole's life is a sad one. His A Confederacy of Dunces, published over a decade after Toole's death, won the Pulitzer Prize and is now heralded as a comic masterpiece of the twentieth century. Still, he died thinking himself a failure.

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'The Sea is My Brother' by Jack Kerouac

March 20th, 2012

A lost novel is a very strange thing. The term implies that the author’s career carries or carried (as is often the case) enough weight to justify the publication of a previously unreleased work, which creates problems for a critic. How should one judge a never-released, not-quite-finished book? Is it fair to judge this “lost” novel through the lens of the author’s legacy, and more importantly, is any alternative even possible?

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'Tales From Development Hell - The Greatest Movies Never Made?' by David Hughes

March 6th, 2012

Aspiring writers dream of the day they sell their first screenplay.  But for many, that day is only the beginning of a long waking nightmare, drawn out over years, as their beloved creation is battered, eviscerated, and rewritten by drooling barbarians.  And there are no guarantees that their story, in any form, will ever make it to the screen. Instead, it will remain mired in Development Hell.

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'The Wolf Gift' by Anne Rice

February 15th, 2012

The Wolf Gift marks Anne Rice’s return to the gothic horror novels that her fans adore, this time taking a detour from vampire territory into the lair of the werewolf. Reuben Golding is a handsome, wealthy young reporter nicknamed “Sunshine Boy” due to his charmed life and easy smile. On assignment at a sprawling estate in the mountains of Mendocino, California,  Reuben meets the elegant Marchent who has lived a tragic life as the heir of Nideck Point.

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