Writing
Tobias Wolff’s Our Story Begins, Newsday, May 4, 2008
“Mailer Remembered,” Los Angeles Times, April 20, 2008
“Making sense of Hollywood… in print,” Richard Schickel’s Film on Paper: The Inner Life of Movies, Los Angeles Times, April 17, 2008
“5 great novels of Hollywood,” Newsday, February 24, 2008
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith’s Making Waves: New Cinemas of the 1960s and Vanessa R. Schwartz’s It’s So French! Hollywood, Paris, and the Making of Cosmopolitan Film Culture, Los Angeles Times, February 14, 2008
Interview with Susan Choi, Time Out New York, “Margins of Terror,” January 5-February 8, 2008
Caryl Flinn’s Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman, Newsday, January 6, 2008 [pdf]
Zachary Lazar’s Sway, Time Out New York, January 3-9, 2008
“2007 in books: Best reads of the year,” Newsday, December 30, 2007 (scroll down to fifth entry)
“Looking Back: Books,” Frieze Magazine, Issue 112, January-February 2008 [register to read html version; pdf here.]
“Cracking the Code,” Bookforum, Dec/Jan 2008
William Bruce Johnson’s Miracles and Sacrilege: Roberto Rossellini, the Church, and Film Censorship in Hollywood and Thomas Doherty’s Hollywood’s Censor: Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration
Foster Hirsch’s Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King, Los Angeles Times Book Review, October 14, 2007
Lydia Lunch’s Paradoxia: A Predator’s Diary, Time Out New York, October 8-10, 2007
Mick Brown’s Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector, Time Out New York, August 8-14, 2007
“Phil Spector vs. The Wall of Sound,” Design Observer, August 6, 2007
“Funny as All Get-Out,” New York Times Book Review, June 3, 2007
It’s Good to Be the King: The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks by James Robert Parish and Rickles’ Book by Don Rickles with David Ritz
Rebecca Solnit’s Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics, Bookforum, June/July/August 2007
Michael Ondaatje’s Divisadero, Time Out New York, May 31-June 6, 2007
Interview with Michael Lerner, Time Out New York, “Dry times,” March 22-28, 2007
“Hollywood Chronicle,” New York Times Book Review, December 3, 2006
A Star Is Found: Our Adventures Casting Some of Hollywood’s Biggest Movies, by Janet Hirshenson and Jane Jenkins with Rachel Kranz; The Unusual Suspect: My Calling to the New Hardcore Movement of Faith, by Stephen Baldwin with Mark Tabb; Jimmy Stewart: A Biography, by Marc Eliot; Lessons in Becoming Myself, by Ellen Burstyn; Under the Rainbow: An Intimate Memoir of Judy Garland, Rock Hudson and My Life in Old Hollywood, by John Carlyle, edited by Chris Freeman
Karen Russell’s St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Bookforum, Dec/Jan 2007
Charles D’Ambrosio’s The Dead Fish Museum, Time Out New York, April 27-May 3, 2006
Peter Richmond’s Fever: The Life and Music of Miss Peggy Lee, “The power of softness,” Newsday, April 9, 2006 [pdf]
Andreas Killen’s 1973 Nervous Breakdown: Watergate, Warhol, and the Birth of Post-Sixties America, Bookforum, Apr/May 2006
Darlene Harbour Unrue’s Katherine Anne Porter: The Life of an Artist, Bookforum, Dec 2005/Jan 2006
Paula Fox’s The Coldest Winter, Bust, December 2005/January 2006
Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, Time Out New York, October 13-19, 2005
Interview with Mary Gaitskill, Newsday, “A novelist of messy desires,” October 9, 2005 [pdf]
“Karl Rove: The Man Who Followed Ripley,” an essay about the political operative and his literary forebears, posted on Kill Fee, August 19, 2005
Interview with Richard McCann, Time Out New York, “Mom’s the word,” May 12-18, 2005
Interview with Minna Proctor, Newsday, “A father’s calling,” February 6, 2005
Interview with Carole Cadwalladr, Time Out New York, “Memory lane,” January 13-19, 2005
Interview with Marilynne Robinson, Time Out New York, “A twist of faith,” November 18-24, 2004
August Kleinzahler’s Cutty, One Rock, Time Out New York, November 11-17, 2004
Joy Williams’s Honored Guest, Time Out New York, Sept. 30-Oct. 7, 2004
Nadine Cohodas’s Queen: The Life and Music of Dinah Washington, “Was there anyone finah?” Newsday, August 15, 2004 [pdf]
George Hagen’s The Laments, Time Out New York, June 17-24, 2004
Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays, “A problem like Maria,” Newsday, May 30, 2004
Chang-rae Lee’s Aloft, Time Out New York, March 4-11, 2004
Christine Schutt’s Florida, “State of Abandonment,” Newsday, February 29, 2004
Interview with Thomas Mallon, Time Out New York, “The man show,” January 15-22, 2004
Interview with James McCourt, Time Out New York, “Road warrior,” January 8-15, 2004
Maxine Swann’s Serious Girls, Time Out New York, November 13-20, 2003
Paul Ramirez Jonas’ A Longer Day, video installation at PS1, Special Projects Writers Series, May 2001