Carlos Fuentes, “The Old Gringo” novelist, essayist, 1928-2012
“The contract between the author and the reader is a game. And the game . . . is one of the greatest invetions of Western civilization: the game of telling stories, inventing characters, and creating the imaginary paradise of the individual, from whence no one can be expelled because, in a novel, no one owns...
Murdering Myths
Choose your Hornet… Superheroes are not clowns. They don’t do pratfalls, lack technological savvy, or otherwise behave like assholes. It took a franchise like Christopher Nolan’s to usher in a new era of the comic-book-hero-made-flesh, and to give guys like us (who lapped up the TV serial-versions) grown-up editions compelling enough to rival, and surpass,...
Ancient Evenings
When I first moved to New York I knew a girl who fancied herself a kind of Holly Golightly. Oh, her nights! Always, she was full of stories about the latest film that mustn’t be missed, or that cool art opening she crashed the previous weekend. She represented the possibility of inclusion: one day those...
Peter Orlovsky 1933-2010
Muse and lover of the late Allen Ginsburg, and a poet of note. Here’s something from 1957… My Bed is Covered Yellow My bed is covered yellow – Oh Sun, I sit on you Oh golden field I lay on you Oh money I dream of you More, More, cried the bed – talk to...
Lucille Clifton, Poet 1936-2010
sisters by Lucille Clifton me and you be sisters. we be the same. me and you coming from the same place. me and you be greasing our legs touching up our edges. me and you be scared of rats be stepping on roaches. me and you come running high down purdy street one time...
J.D. Salinger 1919-2010
Or Jerome David, as he was known to his folks. Author of the penultimate coming-of-age novel The Catcher in the Rye (and my personal favorite half-novel Franny and Zoey). RIP.
William Safire, Duke of Words 1929-2009
Safire receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the last Bush…the Sunday magazine of the NYT will feel empty without the man who kept us grammatically honest. RIP.
Jim Carroll, Poet 1950-2009
Genius is not a generous thing In return it charges more interest than any amount of royalties can cover And it resents fame With bitter vengeance Pills and powdres only placate it awhile Then it puts you in a place where the planet’s poles reverse Where the currents of electricity shift Your Body becomes...
James Purdy 1914-2009
“My writing is concerned with the soul, with the unknown forces of the psyche. A British writer said I write under the skin, which I liked. In a spiritual sense, the real life of man is going on inside. It’s not what he says or does, it’s something else. The only way, I think, one...
