Rasskazy: New Fiction From a New Russia
Olena Jennings08.23.09
Russia has seen its share of changes, rapidly over the last century and a half. And so has its literature, from the days of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, to the writers managing to document the Soviet era, to today’s pen wielders of supposed freedom and autonomy amidst ongoing conflicts in Chechnya and growing gangland capitalism. Editors Mikhail Iossel and Jeff Parker bring us a new survey of Russian literature for current times. Olena Jennings reviews.
Music: Dead Weather
Casey McKinney08.21.09
Been a lot of bad 70’s rip off bands since Lenny Kravitz first picked up a guitar and pillaged John Lennon* (I am thinking currently of one of those…
Music: The Fiery Furnaces: I’m Going Away
Casey McKinney08.21.09
One of this year’s surprise faves, Memphis based Jay Reatard, may have famously (okay famously if you are a music geek) dissed the Brooklyn…
Music: Psychic TV: Mr. Alien Brain vs The Skin Walkers
Casey McKinney08.21.09
While most of this year’s Genesis P-Orridge attention has been given to his reunion tours with an earlier band, the legendary noise pioneers…
The Little Prince of Purple Rain
Rayvon Pettis08.15.09
It’s been a rough season for ’80s pop. The summer of 2009 has seen Michael Jackson go down somewhat ingloriously, only to rise again in death, forgiven for our incessant gawking at his late public misadventures and/or overexamined life. Then, close on heels, John Hughes, the period’s auteur of adolescence passed. Thank god we still have the indefatigably funky Prince going strong. 25 years after his sorta-biopic’s release, it’s time to reflect on a film that captured best perhaps the ’80’s raison d’être, Purple Rain, released during the apex of Prince’s reign (thank god we no longer have to call him “the artist formally known as” even though I just did). Review by Rayvon Pettis, who is, incidentally, just a tad younger than the film itself. Art by Danny Jock.
Art: Greg Dalton
Casey McKinney08.07.09
Wanted to recommend someone I’ve long known, who is as true an artist as they come, Greg Dalton. He has a banner (the one with flora and a…
The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder
Michael Miller08.07.09
For several novels now, Stephen Elliott has been writing scintillating fiction that is almost always about himself; each is a memoir of some segment of his life, and like many a memoirist, there are those, like Elliott’s father, who challenge the writer’s veracity. In his latest, The Adderall Diaries, Elliott steps up to several challenges: he gets involved in a story that’s not his, a murder mystery, he confronts the naysayers like his father who complain that his memories are fiction, while simultaneously writing, in the midst of it all, perhaps his best memoir yet. Michael Miller charts Elliott’s tortuous and triumphant course through the new novel in his review here.
Don’t Smell the Floss: Healthy Social Boundaries as an Obstacle to Fiction
Jamie Gadette08.06.09
In this collection, Los Angeles-based writer, painter and musician Matty Byloos examines the human condition through amputation, eerie amounts of hair, kittens, pornography and ghost stories. While Byloos’s stories have appeared in The Fanzine and elsewhere in the past, taken together, they bump up against each other like strangers on a bus and as the stories make small talk with each other, they soon realize that they have something in common: Byloos’s funny, warped world view. Here, Jamie Gadette inhales the flossy aroma and reports back.
The Hurt Locker
Scott Bradley08.03.09
Due to some technical difficulties, I’m a little late getting up Scott Bradley’s review of The Hurt Locker, the latest film from director Kathryn Bigelow. It’s another war movie, but unlike other war movies, The Hurt Locker is, as Bradley says, the first great Iraq war movie, putting it on par with such classics as Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket and Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. It’s high praise for Bigelow, whose work showed early promise with Near Dark before later finding an unevenness which apexed with Point Break. The Hurt Locker, which was written by war journalist Mark Boal, appears to have shone a light back on her talents.
Unhealthy Appetites: Dennis Cooper’s Ugly Man
Donal Mosher07.29.09
Dennis Cooper has been exploring new narratives through novels, poetry and theater for decades now. A diamond tipped, pyscho-sexual bodynaut, he can be counted as perhaps the furthest notch along the spectrum of the historically adventurous – black cat side of – Grove Press that has included authors such as Jean Genet, William Burroughs, and the Marquis De Sade. Now with his first collection of stories on the major press Harper Perennial, Ugly Man, Cooper is not pulling any punches for a broader audience. San Francisco based filmmaker and writer Donal Mosher reviews.
