The Stacks Chat: Pete Dexter (Get the Papers, Get the Papers)

By Alex Belth Bronx Banter April 30, 2013 “The truest thing in the world was that you showed who you were writing a column. He said that at his lectures, and they always took that to mean politics or how you feel about the death penalty. Which had nothing to do with...

The Masters Its Ownself

By Dan Jenkins Golf Digest April 1985 Something mythical happens to every writer who goes to The Maters for the first time, some sort of emotional experience that results in a search party having to be sent out to recover his typewriter from a clump of azaleas. The...

The Stacks Chat: Josh “Bad News” Wilker

By Alex Belth Bronx Banter June 20, 2011 The Cardboard God of Hellfire, our man Josh Wilker, has a new book out. I recently had a chance to ask him a few questions about it. Alex Belth: How did this project come about? Josh Wilker: I guess the series editor, Sean...

The Stacks Chat: Adger Cowans

By Alex Belth The Daily Beast January 15, 2017 We could all use a respite from the craziness in the air these days. So for a much-needed dose of spiritual nourishment and artistic inspiration, look no further than Personal Vision, the handsome new monograph of the...

Great Men Die Twice

By Mark Kram Esquire March 1989 There is the feel of a cold offshore mist to the hospital room, a life-is-a-bitch feel, made sharp by the hostile ganglia of medical technology, plasma bags dripping, vile tubing snaking in and out of the body, blinking monitors...

The Killing of Gus Hasford

By Grover Lewis L.A. Weekly June 4–10, 1993 1. SEMPER GUS “The best work of fiction about the Vietnam War,” Newsweek called Gus Hasford’s The Short-Timers when it was first published in 1979. The slim hardcover sold, like most first novels, in the low thousands, but...

A Hurdler in Inner Space

By Mark Kram Esquire June 1988 Odd, he was thinking, how a streak leans on you, twists you, turns you, can overwhelm the most finely tuned psychology designed to protect you from its vast intrusions. He was stretched out on a bed in a dark Madrid hotel room, listening...

The Stacks Chat: Rich Cohen

By Alex Belth Bronx Banter November 1, 2013 Rich Cohen’s new book, Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football, is a keeper. I’ve been a fan of Cohen’s writing ever since my pal Steinski hipped me to Tough Jews. A few weeks ago I talked to Rich...

Escape From New York

By Mark Kriegel Esquire December 1995 It is early morning in Miami, still dark, black water lapping at the dock overlooking Biscayne Bay. But here in this cold, cranky bloodshot hour that so injures a sportswriter’s metabolism, Pat Riley is undaunted, optimistic....

Magic

By Joseph Dalton Inside Sports May 1980 Los Angeles is in the middle of a heat wave; the Santa Anas are blowing in off the desert and the air is hot and dry even here in the Forum, where tonight the Lakers are up against the run-and-gun San Antonio Spurs....

The Stacks Chat: Craig Robinson

By Alex Belth Bronx Banter July 25, 2011 There are a ton of baseball blogs but few that are truly original. Josh Wilker’s Cardboard Gods is one, Batgirl’s old Twins blog was another. And then there is Flip Flop Fly Ball, by the British graphic artist Craig Robinson....