“Just as Frankenstein’s creature turned against its creator,” writes Jon Savage in Teenage: The Invention of Youth Culture, “so could the young of the West turn against their parents and institutions.” To give a tiny bit of context, Savage was writing about the children of the Industrial Revolution, people who lived over 200 or more years ago, and the realization by thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and writers from Goethe to Dickens that young people were just that: young people.
I’m burnt out on dystopia. We’re currently living through a number of different daily scenarios that George Orwell or William Gibson called decades ago, and new levels of absurdity that would make Albert Camus shake his head in disbelief. I don’t try to hide from the bad news, because it’s not like I could if I wanted to. But when I sit down to read a novel, I’d rather try and escape just a little. I’ve read plenty of books where some author shows us their version of what the future will look like, and nine times out of ten the prophecy is pretty grim—which is totally reasonable because, well, humanity likes to destroy itself. Still, I’d like a little less somber from time to time with my reading experience these days. Lately I try to steer clear of reading or watching anything about the future because, frankly, I’m sick of thinking about what’s to come.
In 2004, after over a quarter-century releasing music under the project named Jandek, Sterling Smith gave the world a glimpse. It wasn’t a complete biography, but the artist who had intentionally shielded his true identity while releasing sometimes two new albums of raw and ghostly folk music a year showed he was more than just a face that graced a handful of album covers. Since that first performance, Smith continues to perform live, but still little is known about him. […]
“They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us” uses Bruce Springsteen, Chance the Rapper, and more to examine America in the 2010s.
It was cold the morning after it was announced David Bowie had died. Not surprising since I live in New York City and it happened in January. Yet I found myself standing outside my apartment around six in the morning, gym clothes on, not really dressed to be idling around. I put on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, which I’ve listened to countless times since I was about 13, and simply referred to […]
It’s funny how people perceive things. I saw the movie Stand by Me, which turns 30 this month, around the time I turned 7, right after the film was released on VHS. I remember the person behind the counter telling my babysitter who was helping me pick out movies that they’d just gotten the film in the day before. When we showed her the movie we’d picked, my stepmom asked if it was scary when we told her the movie […]
I’m not sure if Americans being reluctant to get out and see more of the country and world is strictly a post 9/11 thing, like we’re not safe here, but we’re way less safe anywhere else, or if it’s always been this way. All I know is that I don’t see that many great books about stepping out of your comfort zone and into the back of a car or hiking for miles. There are glimmering examples, memoirs that have […]
It’s too early to say, but The Incantations of Daniel Johnston, a graphic novel that Two Dollar Radio have slated for a July release, by Ricardo Cavolo and written by Scott McClanahan, might have the best cover of the year. Sorry to all other books that are out in 2016, this thing is just glorious.