The perfect encapsulation of Galaxie 500 appears rather late in Temperature’s Rising, a brief but intriguing scrapbook and oral history about the band. A college classmate of theirs explains, “Their album covers made a statement. Cool Restraint. Educated. Upper Class. Lots of Social Contacts.”
I have a bad habit. (No it’s not that I read Tucker Max’s books for pleasure.) My bad habit is that I often begin books by taking a peek at the ending. The best test of a book is not the seduction of a well-planned first sentence; it is how well the book satisfies expectations at the bitter end. By this measure, Tucker Max’s third book, Hilarity Ensues, is a great read. The epilogue begins, “When I got to the literary world, it was like a great big pussy, just waiting to get fucked—and I stepped up and fucked the
Somewhere at the intersection of practical science, high art, dorm room philosophy, and idiosyncratic star-making exists the journalism of Lawrence Weschler, a longtime New Yorker writer and the current head of New York University’s Institute for the Humanities. As a sculptor of his own career, he has never been afraid to pithily brand what it is he does. In the 2000s, McSweeney’s began publishing a series of unlikely but oddly compelling visual rhymes under the rubric of “convergences.” In the ’90s, when he was engaged deeply in political journalism, he explained that he was shuttling between “cultural comedies and political
