from City of Blows

By Tim Blake Nelson

FEB 2023 | Fiction

Those familiar with Tim Blake Nelson's work in Coen brothers films, the Watchmen series, or last year's Old Henry, will immediately understand that this novel's depictions of Hollywood machinations are of a higher caliber than those in any other literary work that's attempted to depict that world. City of Blows abounds in the economy and fluidity that accompanies true authority—seen in this description of a producer: “One of the biggest pricks in LA. But he gets his movies made. Directors rarely work for him twice.” What's less expected is Nelson’s investigation of the relationship between insecurity and toxicity, seen in Weinstein-esque predators but also applicable to masculinity at large. The psychological motivations and character examinations develop City of Blows from a roman à clef to a work far more universal.

Mark Haber with Andrew Ervin

MARCH 2022 | Books

The questions of what constitutes art and who gets to decide have gnawed at me for years. Mark Haber’s second novel, Saint Sebastian’s Abyss, addresses these same concerns in ways I wish I had thought to do myself.

Gregory Corso’s The Golden Dot: Last Poems, 1997–2000

By Charles Stein

MAY 2022 | Books

Gregory Corso died more than twenty years ago, but his meticulously composed final poems are presented here for the first time, thanks to the tireless efforts of Raymond Foye and George Scrivani in retrieving its manuscript and preparing it for publication.

72. (Various walls around the city)

By Raphael Rubinstein

OCT 2021 | The Miraculous

One day in 1986, more than a dozen years after Shirley Chisholm, Barbara Jordan, Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Cardiss Collins have been elected to Congress, a group of artists, activists and art historians who keep their identities secret by donning gorilla masks surreptitiously plaster the walls of the city with a poster noting, in thick sans serif type: “Only 4 Commercial Galleries in N.Y. Show Black Women. Only 1 Shows More Than 1.”