Deconstruction Zone

Orson Welles: A Man of a Certain Ego

[5.Feb.10] :. “The chief proof of a man’s real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness. It argues... a power of comparison and of appreciation which is in itself proof of nobility.”
 

The Big Nowhere: Rudy Wurlitzer’s Rediscovered Trilogy and Bob Dylan Revisited

[18.Dec.09] :. The myths of unspoiled frontiers and the freedom of the open road, lives played out on the margins of society, attachment and detachment, wrestling matches with the ghosts of Samuel Beckett and Louis L’Amour…
 

Strange Muse: Jack London and Ernest Gallo

[19.Nov.09] :. One bad novel, gallons of cheap red wine, and spring-fed creeks of sweat.
 

The Name of This Land is Hell: Mexico in Literature

[23.Oct.09] :. When the author of a sitcom-styled novel about Mexican heritage cannot resist mentioning the modern-day carnage, then it's fair to assume that the murders have become a significant part of the national identity.
 

Hal Ashby: Hollywood Rebel

[25.Sep.09] :. Films and books strive toward a common goal: telling a story. And very few modern filmmakers are as good at spinning a yarn as the late Hal Ashby was.
 

Rabid and Rascally Creatures: Richard Brookhiser’s “Happy Darkies”

[28.Aug.09] :. Familial or political, conservatives in America actually have no moral boundaries whatsoever.
 

Rudy Wurlitzer, Bob Dylan, Bloody Sam, and the Jornado del Muerto

[30.Jul.09] :. Dylan’s beautifully simple ballad captures the paradoxical fear of and longing for death that is the hallmark of Wurlitzer’s narratives and what lurks at the heart of the human experience.
 

Out of Tune and ‘Amplified’

[17.Jun.09] :. As George Orwell said, “Nearly every book is capable of arousing passionate feeling, even if it is only a passionate dislike.”
 

Depression 2.0: Sunday in Kerouac Alley

[29.May.09] :. Scott Thorson rang, flat broke and disabled, in chronic, horrendous pain from a botched murder attempt and an even more botched plastic surgery, hoping that I would serve as his conduit for another lucrative laundry airing.
 

Sherlock Holmes and the Shanghai Gesture

[24.Apr.09] :. “We have become archetypes,” laments Holmes to Watson, “we were created and published before the year 1923, which places us and many of our adventures into the realm of public domain.”
 

Little Murders: And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

[20.Mar.09] :. This is not Tom Brokaw’s Greatest Generation but, rather, Hunter S. Thompson’s Generation of Swine, the urban home front during the waning days of World War II, gritty and unvarnished, and chillingly reflective of modern sociology.
 

Blind Man with a Pistol: Ishmael Reed’s Misguided Pow-Wow

[26.Feb.09] :. Anyone who has witnessed affirmative action policies in play can tell you that bad apples are chosen to fulfill a quota, not unlike a cop who harasses every citizen who bears a vague resemblance to a wanted suspect.
 

Conversing with Rudy Wurlitzer: ‘A Beaten-up Old Scribbler’

[6.Feb.09] :. My conversations with Rudy Wurlitzer were not unlike a road journey itself with plenty of unplanned side trips along the way.
 

The Vast Immensity of it All: Fear and Loathing on Sunset Boulevard

[19.Dec.08] :. Faces of Sunset Boulevard is, without a doubt, one of the strongest statements about man’s dark fate in the West ever committed to paper in the author and photographer’s chosen form.
 

The Hardest Work Imaginable: Bukowski’s Wine-Stained Notebook

[14.Nov.08] :. Fear, one must understand, is the lubricant that keeps the wheels of human progress greased. Charles Bukowski understood this concept all too well.
 

Reinventing the Southern California Novel: Marisa Silver’s The God of War

[30.Sep.08] :. Silver took the vital ingredients of a regional novel and composed an L.A. tale, but set many miles east -- at the edge of the desolate Salton Sea -- a wasteland that would have held tremendous appeal to T.S. Eliot.
 

The Panting Maniac: Chasing Lolita on a Grim 50-Year Anniversary

[15.Aug.08] :. What the author finds on the bottom end of American pop culture in 1958 is an environment ripe and primed, no matter how subconsciously or keep-it-in-the-family quiet, for the sexual exploitation of youth.
 

Samuel Fuller, “The Poet of Potboilers”

[21.Jul.08] :. Fuller was a playful but hard-bitten cynic who imposed his sometimes weary, whistling-past-the-graveyard worldview on all those people sitting in the dark.