Letter From LA: Winter 2024

This past holiday season was the first time in 15 years that I didn’t send out electronic holiday cards; I’ve been bogged down by so much depressing news about life in Los Angeles as well as the sad state of world affairs that I just lost track of time (here’s a sampling of past holiday […]

Gerald Locklin (1941-2021)

Sunday, January 17, 2021 Gerald Locklin (1941-2021) The W-E Bicoastal Poetry Reading Series took place this afternoon and it went very well, though my heart was incredibly heavy. Shortly after 1 p.m., I learned that Gerald Locklin had died shortly before 8 a.m. Eileen Klink, the chair of the English Department at CSU Long Beach, […]

‘How to Read Donald Duck’ Returns to US Shores

It’s back. “How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic” by Ariel Dorfman (who was the cultural adviser to President Salvador Allende from 1970 to 1973 during the short, glorious years of socialism in Chile) with the Belgian sociologist Armand Mattelart, was an instant best-seller in Chile in 1971. The comic-book-sized publication […]

The Evergreen Review Returns

THE EVERGREEN REVIEW VOLUME 1, NUMBERS 1, 2, and 3 “If it is impossible to imagine literature being labeled obscene in our time, it is largely because of the Evergreen Review.” —The Daily Beast From the moment of its inception, The Evergreen Review pushed the boundaries of propriety and free speech. Authors like Allen Ginsberg, Kenzaburō […]

Indignez-vous! (Time for Outrage)

From The Nation. Toward the end of 2010, a small book by a 93-year-old man unexpectedly reached the  summit  of  the  best-seller  list  in  France. Indignez-vous! by Stéphane Hessel sold more than 600,000  copies  between October  and  the end of December. Stéphane Hessel, born in 1917, grew up in a rich literary milieu, authoring novels […]

keep looking »