In September, the final Borders stores closed, adding to the funeral pyre of big-box stores content providers that went before them, like Tower Records? or Virgin Megastores.
Some people believe it is only a matter of time until all bookstores go the way of the horse and buggy. But all is not lost—at least not yet. Read More…
George Clooney is a political junkie. The son of a newsman explored the intersection of government and journalism in the Oscar-winning Good Night and Good Luck. Now he’s taking on presidential campaigns in The Ides of March, a political thriller that fits the feel of this election season—more dark and cynical than hope and change.
Talking from his home in Lake Como, Italy, as he prepared for the movie’s launch at the Venice Film Festival on Aug. 31, Clooney framed his latest effort as actor, director, and screenwriter in almost classical terms: “The story is about ambition—do the ends justify the means? At what price do we sell our souls?”
Ides stars Ryan Gosling as a young presidential campaign aide forced to confront an illusion-shattering scandal on the eve of a pivotal March primary fight in Ohio. It’s a tight little morality tale on the campaign trail that manages to be both timely and universal. Read More…
Arguably America’s greatest living author—and certainly our earthiest—lives half the year in Livingston, Montana. It’s a town grounded in the early 20th-century West, with neon signs on brick buildings and mountains in the background, all crowned by a former train depot that was once the preferred entrance to Yellowstone National Park.
The town is a reminder of a time when authors were respected ambassadors of a mythic America, the dream readers who could shrink large distances with their dispatches, articulate outlaws who could drink and fight and fuck and still file on deadline, drawing a straight line from Jack London to Ernest Hemingway with a thousand wasted wannabees in between.
Jim Harrison steps out of that tradition, but with contempt for its pretensions. He is all appetite and no apologies. And so the author of Legends of the Fall and 30 other books, including The Farmer’s Daughter (newly released in paperback), is one of the most accessible of modern American writers whose work is filed under “literature.” He is not locked inside his head but connected to the land and heart and, especially, stomach. For all his freely admitted highs and lows, buoyed by lust and flashes of violence, he keeps the virtues of kindness and forgiveness close. His writing reminds us to try our best to be happy animals in an unsentimental world. Read More…
In a fall defined by market chaos, the long road of the campaign has ended up in uncharted economic territory — amid voters’ competing emotions of anxiety, aspiration and anger.
After the spring primaries’ reversals of fortune and the hot summer months’ marathon, we’re far enough along to begin viewing the cycle with some perspective — at least a musical perspective.
Because if you’re a political junkie, you know that each campaign season has its signature song. Read More…
Cash & HST—Honest men outside the law
Last Saturday at 10:00 p.m. Eastern time, 7:00 p.m. Woody Creek time, Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes were shot out of a giant cannon, full of fireworks and in the shape of a fist. The invite for the official send-off at Thompson’s Owl Farm in Colorado was restricted to 350 of Hunter’s closest friends, including actors Johnny Depp, Bill Murray and Jack Nicholson. Music was provided by Lyle Lovett. Two Democratic presidential candidates, George McGovern and John Kerry, were reportedly on hand to pay their respects, which might say more than a raft of textbooks about the real difference between the parties.
Across the continent, a small group of friends gathered on the roof of Owen Brennan Round’s house in Alphabet City to send off the good doctor with a glass of his favorite whiskey, Chivas Regal, on ice. We listened to “Walk on the Wild Side,” and at 7 p.m. Woody Creek time, as a giant full yellow moon ascended above the rooftops, we offered a toast, then poured the last drops from the bottle on the roof, in the spirit of an Irish wake. Read More…