BIPOLAR BARE: A BOOK REVIEW

August 11, 2022

I’m posting today about “Bipolar Bare,” a memoir by my friend Carl Davis–a man whom many of you know from his presence as an artist and architect in Los Angeles. As you’ll see, it is not an easy read, but one that I found insightful and rewarding. Because his story is so very personal and […]

DRAWING DOWN THE MOON: AN ART REVIEW

I am a reluctant driver these days, in Los Angeles. I’ve had enough of rude and clueless drivers, of endless traffic snarls around road works, of mad speeds on the freeways. The drive west from where we live at the far east end of the Hollywood hills used to be a pleasant, easy, even somewhat romantic drive along Sunset Boulevard. Nowadays, it’s a nightmare.

A LINE TO KILL – A BOOK REVIEW

I read mysteries. I love the genre, and have done so ever since starting out at a young age with Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown, Hercule Poirot and the rest of them. I wrote a couple myself. They’re a part of my literary heritage. So it was with pleasure that I read an early birthday gift […]

A SOFT SPOT: TWO SORT-OF FILM REVIEWS

July 21, 2022

But first, can I share a secret? It’s relevant. This is something I have never told anyone in my life before, not even Ellie, who knows everything about me, because I always found it acutely embarrassing. And here I am, about to say it out loud, in public. It’s a pleasure to be too old […]

THE ANOMALY: A BOOK REVIEW

I picked up a copy of “The Anomaly” by Hervé le Tellier at our local bookshop on the basis of rave reviews and touted best-seller status (“more than a million copies sold world-wide”!) I should have known better. It turned out to be what’s known in the lit biz as a “novel of ideas”—look it […]

DIVINING CHAOS: A Book Review

July 15, 2022

If you have been living in the Southern California area for a while, you’ll surely remember the Big Rock. It was a media frenzy in its day. News cameras greedily recorded every hiccup in the perilous journey of this massive, 430-ton granite boulder from somewhere in the desert to its destination at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

LEGENDS: A Book Review

July 1, 2022

This is one of those books I wanted to like more than I did. Evison is at his best in his evocation of the wild mountain landscapes of the North Cascades in Washington State. The winter winds will chill your bones, you sink into the muddy surface of the meadows in the spring thaw, you hear the rush of streams, the call of birds… Such scenes transport you. All good.

HARLEM SHUFFLE: A Book Review

June 29, 2022

I guess I’m just about as white as you can get. I still recall the trepidation I felt in anticipation of my first visit to Harlem, back in the late 1970s, on an art research project. It’s a good thing I had not read Colson Whitehead’s “Harlem Shuffle” before going there; if I had, I might never have dared set foot in that fabled quarter of New York City… Joking? Not entirely. (I was actually warmly welcomed; never felt a moment of anxiety. My fear was the product of pure prejudice).

Fierce & Tender: Book Review

May 23, 2022

Dene Maria Sebastiani’s story has left me—not wordless: I am, and always have been a man of words—but deeply moved, and in some mysterious way healed by their relentless exploration of the dark side of human nature and their celebration of the power of deep consciousness to heal the wounds that scar that every human […]