A compelling takeaway I didn’t include in my post about Richard Nash‘s speech was his emphasis on how writers crave community. This was his lead into a demand-based publishing model, and had a queasy resonance for me. I applied to graduate school for this reason — I wanted to find other writers and gather a [...]

Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Couch For a Long Time, 2009 Sleet spattered over VIPs queuing outside for the opening of the Whitney Biennial on February 23rd. We suffered in silence, in darkness, our conversations drowned by the monastic groaning of an outdoor installation that cast an eerie blue hue. Dumpling trucks prowled and rogue cameramen interviewed [...]

Snarfing pizza bones, nursing my sick Maine Coon who is less wooly and of more pleasant disposition than the above specimen. Even when he has a thermometer crammed inside one of his most sensitive spots. And he had to have his nailed trimmed which means he can’t hold his own against the other two. I’ll [...]

Charles Saatchi has all the makings of a James Bond villain. He is masterfully powerful with a mottled international background: born in Baghdad, raised in Hampstead, he’s Jewish and obsessed with brash American culture. Saatchi clawed his way up through the advertising industry, creating an empirewith his brother that swayed elections (favouring Margaret Thatcher) and sold [...]

IGGY POP’S AMBIENT, LITERARY JAZZ ALBUM Iggy Pop, the gravelly godfather of punk rock, has mellowed since his howling heyday in the 1970s. But his latest album, Les Préliminaires, would seem almost inconceivable to fans of the smack-addled screamer’s early work with The Stooges. Once famous for guzzling gallons of bourbon on stage, rubbing broken [...]