KENNETH FEARING: NYC’S ORIGINAL ‘DRUNKEN POET’
Kenneth Fearing, “the drunken poet,” was a rising star among the Greenwich Village bohos in the 1920s, his...
WRITERS
WRITERS
VLADIMIR VYSOTSKY: HAMLET WITH A GUITAR
Alternately ignored and vilified by the Soviet authorities during his short lifetime, singer, actor, poet and drunkard Vladimir...
ISABELLE EBERHARDT: RIMBAUD’S ‘DAUGHTER’
Patti Smith championed her, Paul Bowles translated her writings into English, but Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904) may be best...
TEA IN THE SAHARA WITH PAUL BOWLES
While a college student on a semester abroad in Spain, Ken Krayeske made a quixotic trip to Morocco...
DIARY OF A DAMNED SOUL: THE ENDURING INFLUENCE OF ARTHUR RIMBAUD
It could be argued that the French poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) was the first punk. Instead of using...
LUC SANTE: CHRONICLER OF NEW YORK’S ‘LOW LIFE’
As a chronicler of New York’s underside and forgotten histories, Luc Sante walked straight out of the pages...
MANK: THE MAN WHO CREATED CITIZEN KANE
A new Netflix film, Mank, directed by David Fincher, focuses attention on the career of Herman J. Mankiewicz....
BEAT SURRENDER: RECLAIMING THE LEGACY OF LUCIEN CARR
Lucien Carr wasn’t just the person who brought Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs together in...
MY OWN PRIVATE BASKETBALL DIARY: MEETING JIM CARROLL
In 1983, when Chris Epting was at Boston’s Emerson College, he produced a cable access TV series on...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS: A WORD FROM THE WISE GUY
Billy Hough is a longtime fan of William S. Burroughs. He sees parallels between Burroughs’ writings and our...
MY OWN PRIVATE ORWELL
George Orwell died over 70 years ago. It would be hard to find another writer of his generation...
CHARLEY PLYMELL: OUTLAW POET & ORIGINAL PUNK
Poet, publisher, provocateur and people-connector, Charley Plymell is, like fellow Midwesterner Ed Sanders, a floater among contingents of...
WHEN JACK KEROUAC HAD HIS CRACK-UP
Spiraling down a silo of despair and drunkenness in the wake of his On The Road/Dharma Bums celebrity...
WHEN JACK (KEROUAC) MET MAX (BODENHEIM)
When the young Beat novelist (Kerouac) met the old bohemian poet (Bodenheim) in 1951, they were headed in...