Notes and Dispatches: Essays by rob mclennan / Insomniac Press / 2014 / 978-1554831265 / 318 pages rob mclennan has operated above/ground press from his home base of Ottawa for more than twenty-seven years, publishing over a thousand items since the press’ inception in 1993. He is himself a prolific writer, with more than twenty books of stories, poems, and essays to his … [Read more...]
Kerouac: The Last Quarter Century by Gerald Nicosia, reviewed by Kevin Riordan
Kerouac: The Last Quarter Century by Gerald Nicosia / Noodlebrain Press/ 2019 “Don’t mention his name, and his name will pass on.” ---Streets of Laredo This is the approach I will use in trying to get my arms around the new work by Gerald Nicosia, a tale of scholarship lost, dealing with the state of Jack Kerouac’s heritage, estate and research in the latter … [Read more...]
A Jewish Refugee in New York by Kadya Molodovsky, trans. Anita Norich, reviewed by Jessica Kirzane
A Jewish Refugee in New York by Kadya Molodovsky. Translated by Anita Norich / Indiana University Press / 978-0253040763 / 2019 / 172 pages. In some ways, the narrator of Kadya Molodovsky’s A Jewish Refugee in New York—which was serialized in Yiddish in 1941 and recently translated into English by Anita Norich—seems like a typical and entirely relatable protagonist of a … [Read more...]
On the Dangerous Edge of Things: Weed: Adventures of a Dope Smuggler by Jerry Kamstra, reviewed by Gregory Stephenson
Weed: Adventures of a Dope Smuggler by Jerry Kamstra / Peer Amid Press / 2019 / 978-1-7335481-0-6 / 312 pages This is, to be sure, a tale of adventure – a non-fiction, first-person account of moving a massive amount of marijuana from Mexico into the United States. The suspense and excitement attendant upon that enterprise, the cunning manoeuvres and minute particulars of … [Read more...]
The Anna Karenina Fix by Viv Groskop, reviewed by Margaryta Golovchenko
The Anna Karenina Fix by Viv Groskop / Harry N. Abrams / 978-1419732720 / 2018 The Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons from Russian Literature is more than your average memoir, beginning with its title. A kind of dark literary joke I still can’t help but chuckle at, Groskop uses it to set the stage for a well-balanced and thoughtful exploration of Russian classical literature … [Read more...]
Review – Les Paul: The Lost Interviews by Jim O’Donnell
Les Paul: The Lost Interviews: Five Never-Before-Published Talks With a Guitar Genius by Jim O'Donnell / 978-1492218913 / 152 pages What comes to mind when you hear the name "Les Paul"? Maybe the iconic guitar, launched at the dawn of rock and roll and played by many of music's most talented guitarists. Or perhaps you think of the musician, the performer, the songwriter - or … [Read more...]
Review – The Beats: A Very Short Introduction by David Sterritt
The Beats: A Very Short Introduction by David Sterritt / Oxford University Press / 978-0-19-979677-9 / 126 pages David Sterritt's work might be familiar to Beat or film aficionados through his previous books, which include Mad to be Saved: The Beats, the '50s, and Film, and Screening the Beats: Media Culture and the Beat Sensibility among others. In The Beats: A Very … [Read more...]
