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Drug Lit: Five Great Reads for 4/20
Writing about drugs has a long and rich history. As does drugs about writing. And drugs. And writing. What were we saying? Today is 4/20, which for some reason is a day people smoke pot in public and...
View ArticleJerry Stahl on Hep C, Fat Suits, and Masturbating Babies
The following interview appears in the new issue of The Believer. (Ed. note: definitely in our top 5 interviews of all time at Literary Hub.) Jerry Stahl is best known for his first book, 1995’s...
View ArticleThe Pirate
The history of punk is the history of outsiders, of not just not fitting in but more than that—visibly, audibly, socially breaking the molds, making a point of not fitting in. It’s within this world...
View Article“Mom, I’m Taking Opiates Again, I’m Fine.”
The following essay appears in The Heavy Feather Review. 1. I tell my mother that I’ve started taking opiates again. “Not the way I took them last time,” I say. When I say last time, I mean the time...
View ArticleFear and Loathing in NYC: Hunter S. Thompson Goes to Town
Eleven years ago tomorrow Hunter S. Thompson placed the muzzle of a handgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The beloved author and counterculture figure ended his own life in the kitchen of his...
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Berlin: It’s Not All Sex, All the Time
Yes, I live in Berlin. And I know what you’re thinking. I know because you seem to have one-track minds when it comes to my adopted home. On a literary panel in a converted crematorium, an American...
View ArticleOnce Upon a Time in Berlin
Rob Spillman’s memoir, All Tomorrow’s Parties (Grove, April 5th), is, among other things, a compelling look back at a newly reunified Berlin, as anarchists fought fascists in running street battles...
View ArticleMitchell S. Jackson’s The Residue Years, Part One
It is the season that Black Lives began mattering and Obama wanted brothers to keep their brothers and the world lost the ex-First Lady (RIP), who believed she could cure what seemed pandemic in my old...
View ArticleMitchell S. Jackson’s The Residue Years, Part Three
In the conclusion of Mitchell S. Jackson’s autobiographical documentary, The Residue Years, Jackson heads to New York, novel in hand, and begins to realize a future born from the hard-luck past… To...
View ArticleFathers Who Leave and Fathers Who Return
Some strange centrifugal force tugs the souls of fathers away from the center, away from home. Many resist. A few probably don’t even notice this pull, too distracted to obey it, or, in the best case,...
View ArticleThe Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day I Woke Up As a Debut Author
Alarm. Every beep is louder. Why does this technology exist? Today: a lot of novels didn’t come out that should have, and some did come out, like mine. I sit up and I look at my room: clean jeans on...
View ArticleSlow Days, Fast Company
“Darling: I know you don’t care about the art of the novel but you might like the part about Forest Lawn.” It’s well known that for something to be fiction it must move right along and not meander...
View ArticleEvery Man A Menace
Getting out of prison is like having a rotten tooth pulled from your mouth: it feels good to have it gone, but it’s hard not to keep touching at that hole. Raymond Gaspar served four years this time....
View ArticleWriting a Novel is Just Like Searching for Ecstasy in Cambodia
One morning a few years ago I was in bed in Upstate New York texting with a private investigator friend of mine. I’d just sold my first novel as part of a two-book deal, a surprise for both of us. Six...
View ArticleThe Hidden Keys
Tancred Palmieri was sitting in the Green Dolphin thinking about how best to dispose of a black diamond he’d stolen from a house on the Bridle Path. He was twenty-five years old and he’d been a thief...
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