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The Joy of Smut

The porn here is explicit, character-driven, and polymorphically perverse.

By: S.I. ROSENBAUM | October 17, 2012

The people who made Spokane Indian writer Sherman Alexie's semi-autobiographical The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian the second-most censored book of 2010 didn't realize they were doing him a favor, he told us.

By: DEBRA CASH | October 09, 2012

Interview: Gina Gershon finds her pussy

Even before her traumatically hilarious performance in the trailer-park comedy of horrors Killer Joe , Gina Gershon has been an actor who fiercely commits.

By: ROB TURBOVSKY | October 12, 2012

BACKTALK_FranLiebowitz_bySteveWeigl_list

Interview: The radicalization of Fran Lebowitz

Fran Lebowitz's writer's block is almost as legendary as her wit.

By: JON GARELICK | October 05, 2012

Philip K. Dick was a friend of mine

I'm at a conference at San Francisco State all weekend and I'm surrounded by Dickheads.

By: WILLIAM SARILL | October 05, 2012

Hanna Rosin's 'Men'

Hanna Rosin's anachronistic and jumbled The End of Men: And the Rise of Women is exactly what you'd expect.

By: THOMAS PAGE MCBEE | October 01, 2012

Michael Chabon feels the flow

Michael Chabon has a thing for pop culture.

By: CLEA SIMON | September 28, 2012

Junot Díaz: down and dirty

Pulitzer alum and MIT prof Junot Díaz's new book, This Is How You Lose Her , follows his alter ego Yunior to Boston, where he gets yelled at by racists and rejected by women.

By: S.I. ROSENBAUM | September 21, 2012

Readers say the darndest things

Bookstore culture from the inside
Bookstores — those endangered spaces perpetually under threat from market forces and the relentless march of technology — trade on charm.

By: EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | September 14, 2012

Interview: Todd Gitlin looks at Occupy

Volcanic
Most aficionados of progressive politics probably knew that Todd Gitlin would write a book on Occupy even before he did.

By: CHRIS FARAONE | September 11, 2012

Jonathan Kozol returns to the scene of the crime

Digging for Fire
In 1985, with President Ronald Reagan boasting of "Morning in America," and no end in sight to the inequalities in America's public schools, educator, activist, and writer Jonathan Kozol traveled from his hometown of Newton, Massachusetts, to New York's South Bronx, statistically the poorest neighborhood in the country.

By: JOHN J. KELLY | September 17, 2012

The immortal life of Harvey Pekar

A comics legend’s posthumous abundance
So here's our man, gone these two years and still putting out work.

By: S.I. ROSENBAUM | August 29, 2012

Summer reads for 2012

Fiction
Fiction

By: PHOENIX STAFF | August 17, 2012

Worthy pastimes for highbrow youngsters

Existentialism for tots
Hey, nerdy smart kids! This October, a publisher called Bloomsbury will put out a special activity book just for you!

By: EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | August 15, 2012

Alif the Unseen

Excerpted from the novel by G. Willow Wilson
Alif sat on the cement ledge of his bedroom window, basking in the sun of a hot September.

By: G. WILLOW WILSON | August 14, 2012

Ride a Cockhorse

Excerpted from the novel by Raymond Kennedy
Looking back, Mrs. Fitzgibbons could not recall which of the major changes in her life had come about first, the discovery that she possessed a gift for persuasive speech, or the sudden quickening of her libido.

By: RAYMOND KENNEDY | August 14, 2012