Work Is a Funny Thing in Adelle Waldman’s ‘Help Wanted’
Nickel and Dimed meets a suburban big box store in Adelle Waldman’s unexpectedly humorous, dystopian workplace caper, Help Wanted.
Books
The Journey Motif in ‘The Half-Life of Guilt’ Is No Guilt Trip
There is no guilty pleasure in reading Lynn Stegner’s The Half-Life of Guilt. There is only pleasure.
Jukebox Gallery: A Michael Goldberg Rock Photo Essay
Michael Goldberg shot his first photo of the Doors’ Jim Morrison at the first US rock fest in 1967. Enjoy this photo essay spanning his career as a photographer and critic.
The Complicated Life of Moby Grape’s Skip Spence
This bio about Moby Grape’s Skip Spence dissects and casts a glowing light on his work as a composer of some of the most influential music of San Francisco’s psychedelic scene.
Premee Mohamed’s Sci-Fi ‘We Speak Through the Mountain’ Is a Call for Cooperation
Premee Mohamed’s We Speak Through the Mountain is a school story set in a future that looks startlingly close to our times, sentient fungal infections notwithstanding.
Five Excellent Recent Books Blending Music and Personal Narrative
Music writing often combines the personal, political, and historical in new and inventive ways revealing the interconnectedness of these categories.
Language Is a Virus, and People Could Die
The COVID pandemic seemed to accelerate the spread of new viral media, but viruses mutate, pop culture replicates, and everything’s a cover song.
Ananda Lima’s Mystical and Metafictional Dance with the Devil
Poet and translator Ananda Lima’s debut fiction, Craft, is an absorbing mystical and metafictional dance with the Devil.
Naomi Novik’s Fantastical Feminist Worlds
Award-winning speculative fiction writer Naomi Novik’s short stories are collected in Buried Deep, revealing the range of her fantastical feminist worlds.
David Bowie and Samuel Beckett’s Ghost Town at World’s End
How a stroll through the David Bowie exhibit at the Victoria & Albert to an auctioning of a Samuel Beckett manuscript at Sotheby’s left me at the World’s End.
Horror Puzzle Video Game ‘The Exit 8’ Is an Inescapable Meme
The horror puzzle video game The Exit 8 is peak capitalist art, or if you prefer, content farm. Either way, it’s also an inescapable meme.
The Many Happy Lives of The Turtles’ Mark Volman
From working with Frank Zappa and T. Rex to singing the soundtrack to kiddie series like Strawberry Shortcake, Mark Volman’s memoir Happy Forever is a joyful read.