Solitary, spare in his poetry and his person, the writer and musician Jim Carroll, who died last week at age 60, was never easy to take as an artist. His songs were punk rants, his poems drug-scorched versions of Frank O’Hara’s versified journal entries of life among the hip. Carroll’s tone was plaintive, and he…

Stephenie Meyer’s smash hit, Twilight (that’s an understatement, of course), its corresponding movie series, and merchandising of everything you could possibly think of and more, originated from the genre of fiction known as YA (young adult). Since Twilight, it seems that (almost) every YA author (and their mother and/or daughter) has sought to somehow reach…

By now you’ve heard that Patrick Swayze has died. He described himself as a spiritual “seeker.” And you’ve probably read or heard or watched quite a bit about his life. Allow me to add these few words, a few which may not be eloquent but which I’ve not seen elsewhere. 1. Patrick Swayze was a…

So there’s no singing, but the grotesque and the bizarre mixed with the comic is how I’ve finally come to see HBO’s most popular new series, True Blood. The season finale on Sunday came with a heavy dose of ridiculous, soap opera-like melodrama: Marianne (the horned god worshipper) has planned a wedding, complete with white…

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