Wednesday, April 20 2011
The Ferocious Morality of David Foster Wallace
Any relationship with Wallace is destined for generosity, spirituality, and given the honesty and vulnerability of the writer, intimacy. It’s also going to be a serious challenge. It will challenge the reader’s intellect, ideology, and most of all, conception of morality.
Tuesday, April 19 2011
‘Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling’
“We thought sampling was just a way of arranging sounds,” says Chuck D… Public Enemy wanted “to blend sound. Just as visual artists take yellow and blue and come up with green, we wanted to be able to do that with sound.”
Monday, April 18 2011
From the Fringe of Islam: An Interview with Michael Muhammad Knight
Famous amongst orphaned Muslims -- teens and adults trying to find a place in a religion known for stringency -- Knight’s first book, The Taqwacores straddles the line between manifesto and coming of age novel.
Friday, April 8 2011
20 Questions: Jonathan Franklin
Award-winning investigative journalist and Hugh Laurie-kinda lookalike Jonathan Franklin has a knack for finding humor in the funniest places. Hugo Chavez as stand-up comedian we get. But Patrick Buchanan...?
Friday, April 1 2011
Is This the Real Life?: The Untold Story of Queen
'Good on showmanship, but not sure about the singing,’ admitted Brian May, about the future Freddie Mercury. ‘Fred had a strange vibrato,’ chuckled Roger Taylor, ‘which some people found rather distressing.’
Friday, March 25 2011
‘The Art of Immersion’: From Frank Rose’s Book on How Digital Generation Is Changing Our World
Alternate reality games such as Why So Serious? are a new kind of interactive fiction, one that blurs the line between entertainment and advertising, as well as between fiction and reality, in ways barely imagined a decade earlier.
Tuesday, March 15 2011
20 Questions: Hal Needham
When they first light that match, hold your breath! If you inhale, you'll suck in the flames. We'd all be wiser to heed the advice of Hal Heedham, author of Stuntman! My Car-Crashing, Plane-Jumping, Bone-Breaking, Death-Defying Hollywood Life (February 2011, Little, Brown & Company)
Tuesday, March 8 2011
20 Questions: David Anderegg
David Anderegg's 'Nerds: How Dorks, Dweebs, Techies, and Trekkies Can Save America' (Tarcher / Penguin, now in paperback) calls for embracing the socially awkward yet intellectually gifted among us.
Thursday, February 17 2011
Solarian Absurdity
In his classic SF novel Solaris, Stanislaw Lem composes an ode to the absurdity of the human struggle for knowledge. No better is this struggle encapsulated than in the infinite expanse of space and in the discovery of new worlds.
Wednesday, February 16 2011
20 Questions: Kim Edwards
'Labyrinth walker' and award winning author of The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Kim Edwards talks with PopMatters 20 Questions about allowing oneself to head out into uncertain territory -- be it in the middle of a lake or the middle of a story -- and see where the journey takes you. Her latest, The Lake of Dreams published in January.
Wednesday, February 9 2011
Life, The Universe and Everything
Like Richard Feynman before him, Dr. Leonard Mlodinow has a gift that’s all too rare in physicists – he speaks Normal Person. The physicist and author of the New York Times best-seller The Drunkard’s Walk, Mlodinow has a knack for making the complicated issues that crop up in quantum physics understandable to everyday readers.
Monday, February 7 2011
20 Questions: Ariel Sabar
Before award winning author Ariel Sabar begins his book tour for Heart of the City this Valentine’s Day, he tells PopMatters 20 Questions about the lasting influence of an excellent newspaper editor he once knew.
Tuesday, January 25 2011
The Best Fiction of 2010
Tucked into this wide-ranging list of comics collections, retro-inspired literature and cross-overs, are glimmers of something sweet, something to temper the usual Literary Drearies we all love and appreciate. And that’s just the way it should be.
Monday, January 24 2011
The Best Non-Fiction of 2010
PopMatters' writers (a margin-friendly, iconoclastic bunch, for the most part) cast their nets far beyond the world of culture-production to capture some of the best non-fiction books published in 2010.
Friday, January 14 2011
Rescripting the Western in ‘No Country for Old Men’
How the Coen Brothers' ostensibly faithful award winning adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men diverges from its creator's rather questionable politics.
Wednesday, January 12 2011
Lost and Found in Russia: Lives in the Post-Soviet Landscape
This is the story of a nation going through a nervous breakdown, pulling through, but paying the price. It's about a people lost and found, about their search for meaning.
Wednesday, January 5 2011
Memoirs of a Geezer: Music, Mayhem, Life
One of my first memories of watching TV consisted of seeing a performance by the Rolling Stones... My dad and my mum’s brother Johnny were in the living room having a beer... They both went totally mental.
Tuesday, December 14 2010
20 Questions: James McManus
James McManus is one of those writers who can write about any topic and no matter the subject, and you'll be hooked. But you don’t have to be a gambler to get caught up in the thrill of Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker. He hooks us here at PopMatters 20 Questions.
Friday, November 12 2010
20 Questions: Catherine Coulter
Prior to becoming a New York Times bestselling author, Catherine Coulter worked on Wall Street writing funny speeches for an actuarial honcho. “I've never done anything that would land me in prison,” she swears to PopMatters 20 Questions.
Monday, November 8 2010
Fab: The Life of Paul McCartney
Post-war Britain seemed to embrace colour and change. A creative and cultural renaissance was taking place in the heart of the capital, one that caught the attention of the world, and Paul was at the centre of it.
