When I was a kid, few things drew me to a book more assuredly than the existence of a corresponding movie. This could go in either direction, by the way. The nineteen-seventies and eighties were a sort of golden age for novelizations of movies, and I was happy to devour them. Similarly, if a movie was based on a book, inexpensive paperback copies were usually readily available, stocked generously into racks at the supermarket. In retrospect, I think I used it as a rough guidepost as to which books were worthy of my scattered attention. If the story existed in … Continue reading My Writers: John Irving

I own a Global kitchen knife because of Anthony Bourdain. Kitchen Confidential, originally published in 2000, was one of those rare books that became a sensation, stirring up interest among a wide range of readers, most of them charged up by the sense they were receiving a glimpse of something wonderfully secretive about the restaurant industry. At the time, Bourdain was the head chef at New York’s Brasserie Les Halles, but he was also an accomplished enough writer that he had a couple food-themed crime novels under his belt. Kitchen Confidential was his coming out as a nonfiction writer, providing a … Continue reading My Writers: Anthony Bourdain

It was in high school that I started defensively insisting on the artistic value of comic book storytelling. Although in deference to the subject of this point, I should say it was co-mix narratives I was stumping for. Spiegelman prefers that nomenclature, undoubtedly in part because it is has some of the hardscrabble spirit of the term “comix,” which was used for the underground, head shop publications that served as his developmental home. But Spiegelman was even more specific in his choice, adding the hyphen to emphasize the two different words parts, each suggesting an intermingling of elements, in this … Continue reading My Writers: Art Spiegelman