Friday, June 4 2010
Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the Twentieth Century
The future was revealed by a ‘radiant’ woman ‘in flowing, graceful robes’, who explained that in a hundred years’ time, no one would be tramping the streets without a home, or be unemployed. By then the world’s labour would be shared equally, so that each individual only worked five hours a day.
Thursday, June 3 2010
Infinite Gesturing?: James Wood Takes on David Foster Wallace
“Reading Wallace,” says literary critic James Wood, “is like playing a reed instrument. When do you take a breath?”
Monday, May 24 2010
The Invisible Bridge
Men and women in evening dress descended, but Andras saw only architecture: the egg-and-dart molding along the stairway, the cross-barrel vault above, the pink Corinthian columns that supported the gallery.
Monday, May 17 2010
20 Questions: Sarah Silverman
The satirical, taboo-busting, notoriously potty-mouthed Sarah Silverman has written a book about … well, pee – among other things. “Big S” talks with PopMatters 20 Questions about her affinity for Bugs Bunny, an affection for Mr. Rogers, and how, with the help of a time machine, she might have helped steer Hitler from his destructive course.
Wednesday, May 12 2010
Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour
In the chaos-filled days of June 1940, with their future bordering on the calamitous, the British hoped the United States would pay more attention to them than they had to Europe.
Monday, May 10 2010
20 Questions: Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow tells PopMatters 20 Questions about how an indulgence from a librarian and an insult at a sci-fi writing workshop were the best encouragement – and advice -- he ever received. The latest result from those prods, both gentle and not so: For the Win (May 2010).
Monday, May 3 2010
20 Questions: Dave Barry
Dave Barry was born in Armonk, New York, in 1947 and has been steadily growing older ever since without ever actually reaching maturity -- a condition which he struggles with in heart-rending detail and bare-his-breast honesty in his newest book, I'll Mature When I'm Dead.
Tuesday, April 27 2010
20 Questions: Kim Severson
Food writer Kim Severson’s latest is Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life. Her ideal guests at the Ritz, she tells PopMatters 20 Questions, would be Gertrude Stein, Eleanor Roosevelt and Lucille Ball.
Monday, April 26 2010
High Stakes Criticism: An Interview with Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus on Van Morrison, the yarragh, the blues, the memoir, race, authenticity, imagination, his career and what constitutes 'high stakes' criticism.
Thursday, April 22 2010
The History of White People
Evolutionary biologists reckon that all living peoples share the same small number of ancestors... thereby making nonsense of anybody’s pretensions to find a pure racial ancestry.
Wednesday, April 21 2010
Unbound: A True Story of War, Love, and Survival
Delegates of the Sixth Chinese Communist Party Congress in 1928 declared that it was of the “greatest importance to absorb... peasant women into... the revolutionary movement.”
Monday, April 19 2010
20 Questions: Steve Almond
Steve Almond, who’s latest book, Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life (13 April) talks with PopMatters 20 Questions about high ideals for literature – and how sexy William Shatner is.
Sunday, April 11 2010
20 Questions: Mark Kurlansky
Mark Kurlansky is a Renaissance man whose work should be read, learned from, and admired. His latest, Eastern Stars publishes this week. He tells PopMatters 20 Questions why he’ll take rebels over saints any day.
Friday, April 9 2010
Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow
When composer W.C. Handy published the first major collection of blues songs in 1926, reimagining pop tunes as folk songs, he explicitly framed the blues as folk music.
Tuesday, April 6 2010
“A Fanatical Fan with Fanatical Opinions”: An Interview with Jim DeRogatis
Noted pop music critic Jim DeRogatis discusses much with PopMatters, including getting into fights with Wayne Coyne, why Lou Reed is frustrating to talk to, and why Lollapalooza is Wal-Mart ...
Sunday, April 4 2010
20 Questions: Anne Lamott
Everyone in Anne Lamott's books is sort of screwed up, but she stocks them with an irresistible humor and core decency. Her latest, Imperfect Birds, releases 6 April.
Monday, March 29 2010
Curtains: Adventures of an Undertaker-in-Training
There’s a time, from when someone dies to when they magically pop up at the funeral or the cemetery or as a bag of ashes, that remains a black hole, invisible to the rest of the world, and everyone’s happy with the arrangement.
Friday, March 26 2010
A Hundred or More Hidden Things: The Life and Films of Vincente Minnelli
It was Judy Garland’s affinity for the absurd that triggered Vincent Minelli’s idea for a film version of The Pirate, a rakish story that would employ Garland, Gene Kelly, and a very strange song composed by Cole Porter.
Richard Pryor’s Designated Writer: An Interview With Paul Mooney
In a new memoir, veteran stand-up comic Paul Mooney reflects on his life and work with the legendary comedian Richard Pryor and their struggle against racism in Hollywood.
Sunday, March 21 2010
20 Questions: Walter Mosley
Walter Mosley, author of more than 29 critically acclaimed books, presents his latest in the Leonid McGill series, Known to Evil (releasing 23 March).
