James Gandolfini: Ten Years Gone
Sean MurphyMan. Ten years ago, today (and it seemed an intolerably premature death to me, at 43; now that I'm older than he was (51!), it really stings on so many…
A Story about Storytelling
What are you going to do, teach? This was the question. It’s what everyone asked, what everyone thought, how everyone assumed things worked: you get a degree in the Humanities and…
Cormac McCarthy: A Hero for Those in Need of Anti-Heroes
Cormac McCarthy was, like another uber-masculine (albeit polar opposite, aesthetically) writer of the old school, Philip Roth (more on him, here), an artist who did the work. Shunning the spotlight, apparently…
AI Will Not Replace Art
"Etonne-moi!" --Serge Diaghilev, to Jean Cocteau Adam Gopnik, the prolific and brilliant writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker for several decades, has a timely piece in The New York Times that…
1993 + 30 = Saturn (or, a Sun Ra Sampler)
Sun Ra's music sounds like it was intercepted from another world. Thirty years ago, today, Herman Poole Blount, aka Sonny Blount, aka Le Sony'r Ra, aka SUN RA, left these…
Happy Trails, Peter Brown
Never heard of him? Don't worry, you've heard him, nevertheless. Unless you've managed to go your entire life without listening to Cream, and if you've never heard "Sunshine of Your…
Original Poem: St. Elmo’s Fire
Once again the team at The Blue Mountain Review (led by the indefatigable Charles Clifford Brooks III) works magic, putting together another gorgeous issue crammed with first-rate content. This is…
The Style’s the Thing: The Inimitable Martin Amis
Martin Amis poses for a photographer June 12, 2000 at a book signing at the Beverly Hills Library in Beverly Hills, CA. (by Frederick M. Brown/Online USA) Style is not…
Tina Tuner: Twilight of the Goddess
Wow. Another irreplaceable icon has departed a planet that could scarcely contain her. Tina Turner: what a goddess, an inspiration, a river deep & mountain high human being and a…
He is Martin Amis (and We’re Not)
Martin Amis was not merely the supreme literary stylist of his generation, his non-fiction was, arguably (unbelievably) possibly even better than his fiction. An absolute master, and incomparable in every…