Lonelyhearts

The first news to report is that I’m about to order a new wheelchair ramp from The Scooter Store thanks to unsolicited and totally appreciated financial contributions from two friends who shall remain anonymous. Secondly, after a long absence my Deconstruction Zone column at Pop Matters is back: The latest unnecessary literary biography to come [...]

Wurlitzer and Dylan One More Time

My final Deconstruction Zone column for 2009 is now up and running at Pop Matters: Nog, Flats, and Quake are novels rich in invention and introduce the recurring narrative and stylistic tendencies in Wurlitzer’s canon: the myths of unspoiled frontiers and the freedom of the open road, lives played out on the margins of society [...]

Bob Dylan Revisited

I have a new piece running in the Re: Print section of Pop Matters soon — a spin-off from my December column actually — on the new W.W. Norton release Bob Dylan Revisited: 13 Graphic Interpretations of Bob Dylan’s Songs. The book itself is not bad by a long shot but, as so often happened [...]

Strange Muse

My November Deconstruction Zone for Pop Matters is up and running one day earlier than usual: Malmont’s awful novel shares several common traits with my former friend Mac: both are stumbling, rambling, disheveled, rat-infested, artistic and personal fuck-ups. How could I label Malmont’s novel as a “personal “fuck up? You try writing this as the [...]

The Exhaustion of Manifest Destiny

My new Deconstruction Zone column for Pop Matters is up and running this morning. Rudy Wurlitzer, Bob Dylan, Bloody Sam, and the Jornado del Muerto is a consideration of the reissue of Rudy Wurlitzer’s 1969 counterculture novel, Nog, and the death of the west: The growing empire of California is more than just the end [...]