When Gil Scott-Heron died last May at the age of 62 nearly all the obituaries saluted him as “the Godfather of Rap.” It was a title he modestly denied when I interviewed him in 1995, shortly after his recording Spirits had come out. Poet, novelist, R&B musician and social activist, Scott-Heron…
The Messenger
Gil-Scott Heron memoir gives us half a story.
April 6th, 2012 · No Comments
Tags: Featured
Spalding Gray Naked, Unseen
Excerpts from the Journals aren't so entertaining
October 9th, 2011 · No Comments
Spalding Gray struck me as the perfect balance of author and performer, someone who wrote well and revealingly of himself and then brought that self to the stage. As a long time Gray fan, I was anticipating the release of The Journals of Spalding Gray this month until I read the…
Tags: Book Reviews
Taking the Long View
Tom Hayden sees lessons for today's progressives in the movement politics of the '60s.
January 18th, 2011 · No Comments
For many of us, the 1960s never ended. Tom Hayden takes that belief a step further. The ’60s continue…for everyone.
Hayden’s book, The Long Sixties, takes the political history of the ’60s and finds its legacy alive today in the social movement that brought Barack Obama to the presidency. He sees…
Tags: Book Reviews · Featured
Kerouac, Ginsberg, Lenny Bruce and Me
Helen Weaver's Beat memoir brings Greenwich Village of the 1950s to life.
August 12th, 2010 · No Comments
“I am the man who has best charted his inmost self.” Antonin Artaud quoted by Helen Weaver
Helen Weaver’s account of her early days in Greenwich Village is misleadingly titled. Weaver, a new age author and translator nominated for a National Book Award in 1977 for her reading of Antonin Artaud,…
Tags: Book Reviews
Digging Up A Deadly Past
Joe Sacco's Footnotes In Gaza reminds us that senseless killing has a long history in the Palestinian territories.
June 15th, 2010 · 1 Comment
The Gaza Flotilla Raid in May that left nine dead and dozens wounded has already faded into the background of oil-soaked news. While in Seattle earlier this month, the Rabbit witnessed attempts at keeping the issue alive: dueling protests on the University of Washington campus in which both bullhorned sides…
Tags: Comics
Insider’s Take
Gregoire Bouillier's present is a product of his past
July 8th, 2009 · No Comments
The author of The Mystery Guest explains his strange conception, his twisted upbringing and how a glimpse of a friend’s naked mother, followed by a street riot, seems to repeat itself every time he falls in love.
Tags: Book Reviews
The Illustrated Book Review
March 29th, 2009 · No Comments
We’ve written before about comics as a vehicle for memoir. Now comes Alison Bechdel to show how comics can be applied to memoir criticism. Bechdel’s illustrated review of Jane Vandenburgh’s A Pocket History of Sex In the Twentieth Century: A Memoir in the March 29 New York Times Book Review contains all the…
Tags: The Rabbit Rants
See Murakami Run
The loneliness of the long distance novelist...
March 18th, 2009 · 1 Comment
“Long distance running suits my personality,“ writes Haruki Murkami in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Murakami’s memoir isn’t a book exclusively for runners, nor does it try to make running a grand metaphor for life or writing, though there’s some of that (Chapter Four: “Most of…
Tags: Book Reviews
