Close to the Knives
Wojnarowicz is asking us to listen to him crying from his deathbed and the reader cannot turn away.
American
Books written by American authors. Usually written in English.
You are viewing American authors.
You can view all languages/regions, or you can search by editor/translator, genre, era/movement, book authors, or year of edition.
Goodbye to Berlin
Reading Isherwood brings you into a moment in history, and there’s something really powerful and rare about that.
Airless Spaces
Sometimes books constructed out of vignettes seem to be built on a faulty foundation and have frames that are not enough to withstand the weight of a message or a book. Firestone here has used the flexibility of very short vignettes to construct just what her title implies — an airless space.
Written on Water
These essays are talks over coffee and catching up after a long week. They are close friends talking about the issues that matter to them and the parts of the past still stuck to the hem of their clothes.
Hollywood Babylon
here’s one thing you have to remember if you decide to take this trip into the past of Hollywood mayhem. Most of the stories here? Not true. As in: ludicrously not true.
I Am Not Ashamed
If you don’t know who Barbara Payton was, you are forgiven. I was actually introduced to her and her book through Eddie Muller’s Noir Alley on TCM, and a screening of Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, a 1950 James Cagney film.
Adventures in the Screen Trade
I came to William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade via last week’s book, Julie Salamon’s The Devil’s Candy. It was actually mentioned in the puffery on the back of that essential book as being another essential book.
The Devil’s Candy
Salamon is exhaustive in her recounting of the movie-making process, from casting all the way to the final agonizing returns. I learned a lot about what it takes to produce a film, and the processes of people far removed from the actors and the cameras.
Dorothy Parker in Hollywood
I came late to the work of Dorothy Parker and I came to it in a piecemeal way that I think many modern readers come to it. Honestly, I knew more about the saga of Parker’s mortal remains being stored in a filing cabinet for decades than I did about her.
Victorian Murderesses
Hartman asks for serious scholars only, and for the reader to commit to thinking about more than how much blood the scene contained and which gory details are the most disgusting.