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...
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...
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...
By Steve Oney The Atlanta Journal Constitution Magazine May 15, 1977 It was all of two o’clock on a sultry, Thursday afternoon, and Harry Crews was poured into a corner booth at an ersatz nautical bar in Gainesville, Florida, called the Winnjammer. Bits of sailing...
By Grover Lewis Rolling Stone October 12, 1972 Limping delicately as if his boots are a couple of sizes too tight, so rockinghorse loaded on Juarez tequila he’d flunk a knee-walking test, Roy Jenson, one of the neo-Wild Bunch of characters and character actors that...
By Robert Ward New Times June 25, 1976 The out-of-work mechanic with the beer gut, and the four turquoise rings, and the Gene Autry (pink and lime green) cowboy shirt with real pearl buttons, and the mutton chops, and the straight-back greased-down hair, and the big...
By Alex Belth SB Nation October 25, 2012 The first time I heard Roger Angell speak was on a movie screen. I was working as an intern on Ken Burns’s Baseball documentary, sitting in a dark sound-mixing studio in the Brill Building in midtown Manhattan. During his...
By Grover Lewis Rolling Stone 1971 Stockton, Calif.—The Memorial Civic Auditorium, located not far from the central ganglia of this crumby hick town, is old, cavernous, sweltering hot, and overripe with the stink of vintage sweat and piss. The litter-strewn floors are...
By Alex Belth The Stacks Reader I thought you might appreciate this letter written by Nicolai Malko to Vladimir Nabokov. Here, let Malko’s son, George—a fantastic writer and an equally swell guy—explain: The letter was written when my father was in his fifth year as...
By Ivan Solotaroff The Stacks Reader November 11, 2013 Charlie Barnett was pivotal in getting started as a full-time journalist. I spent close to six months—a late fall, entire winter, and early spring—watching him and getting to know his story—not only his crack...
By Ed McClanahan From My Vita, If You Will 1998 If you’ve got it all together, what’s that all around it? —Inscribed on my bathroom wall by Ken Kesey, who attributed it Brother Dave Gardner A bright Sunday afternoon in August 1971, just one week after Bill Graham...
By Charles P. Pierce GQ April 1994 The office park is blank and dead. Denver boomed and Denver busted and this is what’s left—a tiny knot of shuttered buildings strung like a browning Christmas wreath around a ruined hillside. Inside, the carpeting is scarred and...
