“Sometimes you remember certain episodes of your life and you need proof that you haven’t dreamed them.” — Patrick Modiano, In The Cafe Of Lost Youth We’ve all experienced a silver summer: a season or period in our lives that glows, inflamed with retrospective significance. While it’s happening we may sense some looming consequence, or not. OverContinue reading “Silver Summer: Exhuming the Buried Legacy of Lost Youth in 5 Novels by Patrick Modiano”
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A diva who defined the disco moment
Mark Coleman, Special to CNN 4 min read Updated 1:01 PM EDT, Fri May 18, 2012 Remembering a Disco Queen Donna Summer defined the disco era. Her brazenly sexual hits “Love To Love You Baby” and “I Feel Love” horrified some and delighted many more when they came out. They also helped to propel disco intoContinue reading “A diva who defined the disco moment”
The Prospector
In early 1979 I first experienced Andy Warhol’s cinematic oeuvre when a campus film society screened the Paul Morrissey-directed Trash. Originally released in 1970, this plotless wallow in depravity accompanies a junkie hustler (Joe Dallesandro) and his trans roommate (Holly Woodlawn) on their daily rounds. To say Trash transported my Midwestern sensibility to an unexplored continent would be obvious, and besideContinue reading “The Prospector”
AGAINST NOSTALGIA: Gary Indiana’s Unsentimental Journey
Reading reviews by the late author Gary Indiana during the second half of the 1980s, I figured the guy was a lunatic, to be honest. Vituperation and vendetta marked his tenure as art critic of The Village Voice, from 1985 to 1989 — alongside viperish wit and deadly-stiletto targeted prose. That’s why I never missed reading his column.Continue reading “AGAINST NOSTALGIA: Gary Indiana’s Unsentimental Journey”
R Meltzer (Re) Considered
If Richard Meltzer didn’t invent the post-grammatical mode of discourse utilized on the internet, then he prefigured it to a degree that’s uncanny. I’m living for giving the devil his due — Blue Oyster Cult, “Burnin’ For You” (lyrics by Richard Meltzer) Today the mainstream media covers pop music so extensively — exhaustively? — that it’s impossible to imagineContinue reading “R Meltzer (Re) Considered”
Book Review: Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring by Brad Gooch
Leaving my office job one evening in early 1982, I descended the stairway into the Lexington Avenue E train station and spotted a young man furiously chalking up the blank black surface that (temporarily) covered an empty billboard. I immediately recognized Keith Haring; his graffiti-inspired subway drawings were attracting attention all around Manhattan, and heContinue reading “Book Review: Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring by Brad Gooch”
A Party On Every Page: The Star Hits Saga Part 2 (1984-85)
Since Star Hits readers were predominantly teenage girls, it makes sense that two dynamic young women helped to refine and redefine the magazine’s vision during the months following its successful launch. From the moment Alicia Keshishian followed Phoebe Creswell-Evans as art director in mid 1984, the already-spectacular pages erupted in a blinding, vivacious wash of full-spectrum colorsContinue reading “A Party On Every Page: The Star Hits Saga Part 2 (1984-85)”
Book Review: Biography of X by Catherine Lacey
Beginning with Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and continuing with so-called New Journalism during the late Sixties, people tossed around the term Non-Fiction Novel when referring to book-length reportage written in modestly ambitious prose. Beginning with Catherine Lacey’s audacious novel Biography of X, published in 2023, we need to invent a new label, along the lines of FictionalContinue reading “Book Review: Biography of X by Catherine Lacey”
Pull Up To The Bumper
Summer in the City 1981 My love affair with an idealized vision of The City began sometime in 1970. My friend Richard and I rode the bus from the suburbs to downtown Cincinnati on a Saturday afternoon. In the chili parlor off Fountain Square, all the other kids were right in our age range, 12–14,Continue reading “Pull Up To The Bumper”
“If You Don’t Know The Words You Can’t Sing Along”
Launching Star Hits magazine 1984 “I saw someone get beheaded on my way to work today.” David Fricke grinned, shook his head and silently nodded at my announcement, before returning to his typewriter. David Keeps and art director Kimberley Leston stared at me, incredulous. Only Neil Tennant was unfazed. He suppressed a smile. “Where did this horrifyingContinue reading ““If You Don’t Know The Words You Can’t Sing Along””
Mark Coleman 