GalleyCat has an interview with Jeffrey Friedman director of “Howl” a movie about the life and times of poet Allen Ginsberg. When I was in college I memorized large chunks of the poem. So enamored with the poem that I named my fictional magazine for a magazine writing class Howl. Also, the Wikipedia entry for the Howl is endlessly fascinating.
Mpls St. Paul magazine has an awesome profile of poet John Berryman. For the uninitiated here’s a bit about Berryman from the piece:
“After winning a Guggenheim Fellowship and completing a second volume of Dream Songs in Dublin (home of his hero, W. B. Yeats, with whom he had tea a year after graduating from Columbia), after winning the National Book Award and making the cover of Life magazine, he returned to Minneapolis as one the country’s two most prominent poets (his friend Robert Lowell was the other; Robert Frost had died in 1963). Berryman let his beard grow long and wild; he spent increasing amounts of time in the hospital “recuperating” from his alcohol addiction and making desperate last stabs at both the Catholicism of his youth and Twelve Step sobriety. Then, on a cold morning in January of 1972 “just six years after reaching the summit of American letters” Berryman walked from his house at 33 Arthur Avenue in Prospect Park all the way across campus to the far side of the Washington Avenue bridge and jumped, hitting the frozen bank of the Mississippi River ninety feet below. An eyewitness said he waved just before he jumped. He was fifty-seven.”
And GalleyCat puts together a list of indie rock songs that pay homage to the poet.
Max Sparber is working on his very own guide to the Twin Cities and digging up all kinds of very interesting trivia. Part of his guide is reviewing books by Minnesota Authors. My favorite so far is the trio of books by a proponent of group marriage. Though the paragraph Sparber quotes from the memoirs of a St. Cloud reformatory inmate is, well, you just have to read it.
Salon has a great profile of Chuck Klosterman, which makes me feel a little guilty for how much I abhorred Downtown Owl. The LA Times’ Jacket Copy blog has a big round up of Klosterman links (including that hilarious and sometimes just plain mean piece from NY Press) and review of his LA Reading. Klosterman will be reading at the Triple Rock next Thursday, October 2nd. Tickets are $8 and you can get them at Magers & Quinn.
Also in Salon, The Last Days of David Foster Wallace. WARNING — this will break your heart and probably make you cry.
In the Minneapolis Observer Quarterly former City Pages editor Craig Cox reviews David Carr’s The Night of the Gun {earlier Christa reviewed the book and so did I}.
Oh and it’s been a busy week for former ZuZu Petal and Minnesota author Laurie Lindeen (her memoir Petal Pusher came out last year). She was interviewed for both Pop Matters and The Village Voice’s Sound of the City blog.