‘The Perry Bible Fellowship’ gets bound and pressed
Humor is a terrible thing to waste and comic strips are a terrible thing to ignore, so it’s time to finally pin down Nicholas Gurewitch’s The Perry Bible Fellowship. The strip was initially famous for its doughy, featureless characters that found themselves shoved into fantastic and absurd situations, [...]

National Novel Writing Month is here; no more excuses
Proust lined his bedroom with cork panels, muffling any outside noises that might distract him. Trollope got up at the crack of dawn, seven days a week, pounding out 2,500 words before starting his day job at the post office. Hemingway caroused all night and then let [...]

Novelist Dan Fante is still inspired by his famous dad
There’s a fine line between a good poetry reading and a bad one. Fortunately, the rare appearance of LA-native/Arizona-based writer Dan Fante at {open}’s “Readings From a Burning Shore” last week falls into the former category. Fante’s real-life persona stands in stark contrast to the characters [...]

Cholo Style is part gang life, part escape plan

It’s always been hard to say whose gangs were first in California—the Latinos, the African Americans, the Asians, the whites—or first in the publishing world. But as for best, it’s no contest: the Latinos win it, for the early-’80s arrival of Teen Angels magazine: spitting out a [...]

Preservationists’ Options for Acres
With no date yet set for the day that doom will come to Acres of Books, Long Beach preservationists—and would-be preservationists—have an opportunity to consolidate opinion. This is notable in the fast-paced world of razing beloved historic structures—Johnie’s Broiler Bulldoze might be the most egregious recent example—and time spent now could buy [...]

Chris Davidson and Aimee Bender wow with words at the Broadlind Cafe
Fiction and poetry readings can be difficult—even for fans of literature and the spoken word, it takes a concentrated effort to simultaneously listen, digest and react to someone else’s speech. Last Sunday night at the Broadlind Cafe, it was easy: poet Chris Davidson opened [...]

Don DeLillo’s Falling Man is moving, but rather conventional
By Cornel Bonca

It might seem morbid to say, but there’s no writer on Earth more born to the task of writing a novel about 9/11 than Don DeLillo. He’s a lifetime New Yorker who has exposed his deep roots in the city in Libra, Underworld, and Cosmopolis. [...]