Sure, every other obituary of 86-year-old Brooklyn novelist Daniel Keyes is going to talk about Flowers for Algernon. And, yeah, that was his best book. But I’m going to talk about The Touch
Some of you have met Eli Stein before; he’s written Litkicks articles about P. G. Wodehouse and Al Jaffee, and he’s my father. He’s also a cartoonist with a body of published work dating back to the 1950s. If you’ve read a lot of the Wall Street Journal or … Read the rest
A couple of really great finds for you today …
My temperature was no better than lukewarm as I pondered the cover of a book called The Cool School: Writing from America’s Hip Underground
Two excellent new books remind me of the vortex of interests that’s always coursed beneath the surface here at Litkicks — a vortex, in fact, that is central to the literary/artistic sensibility that has fascinated and informed me through my whole life. These interests roughly include music and literature and … Read the rest
I’ve just learned that Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park/Book of Mormon fame have been animating some passages from seminal Western Buddhist author Alan Watts. The videos are excellent! Here’s Music and Life, with a message well worth hearing:
I was also intrigued to … Read the rest
I’ve just thoroughly enjoyed (and learned much from) a graphic novel biography of Bertrand Russell. Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth
I don’t know much about the noir genre, but I checked out a new graphic novel called Dark Heat by Barry Graham and Vince Larue because I like Vince’s beat-inspired writing and artwork, which often emphasizes themes from Michael McClure and Gary Snyder. Vince Larue also drew a very … Read the rest
James Joyce’s experimental masterwork Finnegans Wake
Myself, I’ve never been able to actually finish reading Joyce’s grand … Read the rest
How can I possibly capture the wealth of goodness inside two thick new volumes of classic lit comix, The Graphic Canon, Vol. 1: From the Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Dangerous Liaisons
