Rodger Jacobs

Tender Is the Night of the Living Dead

By Rodger Jacobs

Another slice of social commentary disguised as zombie flash fiction inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald and George Romero. [31 October 2008]

Bleeding on the Page in the Middle of a Nervous Breakdown: Willy Vlautin’s Northline

By Rodger Jacobs

Willy Vlautin loves the damaged people that most of us would go out of our way to avoid. [29 July 2008]

Orson Welles: A Man of a Certain Ego

By Rodger Jacobs

“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.” [5 February 2010]

(more Deconstruction Zone)

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

By Rodger Jacobs

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… [18 December 2009]

(more Deconstruction Zone)

Strange Muse: Jack London and Ernest Gallo

By Rodger Jacobs

One bad novel, gallons of cheap red wine, and spring-fed creeks of sweat. [19 November 2009]

(more Deconstruction Zone)

The Name of This Land is Hell: Mexico in Literature

By Rodger Jacobs

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. [23 October 2009]

(more Deconstruction Zone)

Hal Ashby: Hollywood Rebel

By Rodger Jacobs

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. [25 September 2009]

(more Deconstruction Zone)

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

By Rodger Jacobs

Familial or political, conservatives in America actually have no moral boundaries whatsoever. [28 August 2009]

(more Deconstruction Zone)

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

By Rodger Jacobs

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. [30 July 2009]

(more Deconstruction Zone)

Out of Tune and ‘Amplified’

By Rodger Jacobs

As George Orwell said, “Nearly every book is capable of arousing passionate feeling, even if it is only a passionate dislike.” [17 June 2009]

(more Deconstruction Zone)

Depression 2.0: Sunday in Kerouac Alley

By Rodger Jacobs

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. [29 May 2009]

(more Deconstruction Zone)

Sherlock Holmes and the Shanghai Gesture

By Rodger Jacobs

“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.” [24 April 2009]

(more Deconstruction Zone)

Little Murders: And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

By Rodger Jacobs

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. [20 March 2009]

(more Deconstruction Zone)

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

By Rodger Jacobs

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. [26 February 2009]

(more Deconstruction Zone)

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

By Rodger Jacobs

My conversations with Rudy Wurlitzer were not unlike a road journey itself with plenty of unplanned side trips along the way. [6 February 2009]

(more Deconstruction Zone)

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

By Rodger Jacobs

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. [19 December 2008]

(more Deconstruction Zone)

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

By Rodger Jacobs

Fear, one must understand, is the lubricant that keeps the wheels of human progress greased. Charles Bukowski understood this concept all too well. [14 November 2008]

(more Deconstruction Zone)

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

By Rodger Jacobs

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. [30 September 2008]

(more Deconstruction Zone)

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

By Rodger Jacobs

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. [15 August 2008]

(more Deconstruction Zone)

Samuel Fuller, “The Poet of Potboilers”

By Rodger Jacobs

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. [21 July 2008]

(more Deconstruction Zone)

Soul of a People: Writing America’s Story

By Rodger Jacobs

Federal funding for the arts in the U.S. was a contentious issue for FDR's Works Progress Administration. [3 September 2009]

Ten Bad Dates with De Niro, by Richard T. Kelly

By Rodger Jacobs

A serious (and quite often satiric) cinematic shopping list for moviegoers. [11 August 2008]

Looking for Jimmy by Peter Quinn

By Rodger Jacobs

The disastrous Irish Potato Famine: the result of the collision of unchecked technological advances and subjugation to a conquering monarchy. [5 June 2008]

Dictation by Cynthia Ozick

By Rodger Jacobs

With equal measures of wit, sorrow, and pity, four short novellas are artfully sewn together to explore the unceasing human effort to be known by posterity, no matter how petty or inhumane the actions for which we are remembered. [23 May 2008]

The Moments Lost by Bruce Olds

By Rodger Jacobs

At times impressive in scope and range, the narrative ultimately suffers and strangulates under the weight of the author’s use and abuse of alliterations and arcane verbs and nouns. [22 April 2008]

Re:Print: Bob Dylan Revisited: Wallpaper Art [2 January 2010]

Re:Print: Once-Venerable L.A. Times Borrows From PopMatters [12 November 2009]

Re:Print: White Noise in the Kitchen Supplies Aisle [9 October 2009]

Short Ends and Leader: Randy Quaid Arrested, ‘70s Cinema Forgotten [28 September 2009]

Re:Print: Viva Las Vegas [22 September 2009]

Re:Print: Nine Booze-Soaked Books [17 September 2009]

Re:Print: James Patterson Learns His Fate: Chained to a Typewriter [13 September 2009]

Re:Print: Baseball and the Zen of Ian McEwan [8 September 2009]