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A superbly crafted study of Hunter S. Thompson’s literary formation, achievement, and continuing relevance. Savage Journey is a “supremely crafted” study of Hunter S. Thompson’s literary formation and achievement. Focusing on Thompson’s influences, development, and unique model of authorship, Savage Journey argues that his literary formation was largely a San Francisco story. During the 1960s, Thompson rode with the Hell’s Angels, explored the San Francisco counterculture, and met talented editors who shared his dissatisfaction with mainstream journalism. Author Peter Richardson…

A furious denunciation of America’s coronavirus criminals Hundreds of thousands of deaths were caused not by the vicissitudes of nature but by the callous and opportunistic decisions of powerful people, as revealed here by John Nichols. On March 10, 2020, president Donald Trump told a nation worried about a novel coronavirus, “We’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” It has since been estimated that had…

On the life and afterlives of Jay DeFeo’s Estocada, a work created in the shadow of The Rose In 1965, Jay DeFeo (1929–89) was evicted from her San Francisco apartment, along with the 2,000-pound colossus of a painting for which she would become legendary, The Rose. The morning after it was carried out the front window, DeFeo was forced to destroy the only other artwork she’d started in six years, an enormous painting on paper stapled directly to her hallway…

  This talk is part of the show titled “Experience Leonard Cohen” running from Aug 5, 2021–Feb 13, 2022 at the Contemporary Jewish Museum Leonard Cohen’s music is studded with allusions to Jewish and Christian tradition, as well as Kabbalah and Zen. In his 1994 classic ‘Hallelujah’ he opens with the words ‘Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord, That David played, and it pleased the Lord… the baffled king composing Hallelujah’. As the song progresses, Cohen takes us…

A BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST, based on a true event, The Fortune Men is “a blues song cut straight from the heart … about the unjust death of an innocent Black man caught up in a corrupt system. The full life of Mahmood Mattan, the last man executed in Cardiff for a crime he was exonerated for forty years later brought alive with subtle artistry and heartbreaking humanity” (Walter Mosley, best-selling author of Devil in a Blue Dress). In Cardiff, Wales…

Gina Frangello is the author of four books of fiction, most recently A Life With Men, which is now under development as a series on Netflix. Her debut memoir, Blow Your House Down, was released in April 2021 to a blaze of rave reviews. Every Kind of Wanting was included by both Chicago Magazine and The Chicago Review of Books as one of the “Best Books of 2016.” "Frangello astutely dissects the quandaries of female sexuality, adoption, terminal illness, and…