// Category Archive for: Books

Grace Through Blood: An Interview With Author A. Jay Lee

By Lisa Anderson

With vampires still abundant in popular culture, it’s hard to do anything new with the concept. Nashville Writer A. Jay Lee has managed to do so, however, with his Holy Damned series. The first book, Grace Through Blood, finds young Jamie Grace newly arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, where she finds new love and becomes embroiled in a very unusual community of vampires. The vampires are not the only supernatural beings in the story, either: Jamie herself can see people’s auras, and she and her new boyfriend Grant encounter shapeshifters and battle a vengeful demon as their pasts intersect in Charleston.

Lee has written an innovative, compelling book with a strong sense of place. He sat down recently to chat with me about the premise of the series, its future, and his inspirations.
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The Lowbrow Reader Reader

By Michelle Patterson

Let me preface my take on The Lowbrow Reader Reader which a bit of nostalgia: When I think about the candy I had as a child—the kind that I tried to sneak under my parents’ radar because of the illicit pleasure of spending my allowance on the various toxic-looking treats at the corner store—I only get nostalgic for a few of them and upon closer inspection, my choices were pretty telling. The soda candy, in which the soda-type-liquid is encased in tiny, hard plastic bottle-shaped blobs, was some of the foulest-tasting candy on this earth, both past and present, but I still sucked that down with joyous glee. Candy cigarettes, in both hard and gum form, actually evinced a chuckle from my mom when she did find a pack in the back pockets of my shorts, while doing laundry, because she used to “sneak them,” as well.
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Assemblog: April 20, 2012

Dick Clark: 1929 – 2012

Today I’m introducing a new feature on Popshifter, the Assemblog: a collection of what has captured my attention this week, pop-culturally speaking.

New on Popshifter this week: a spoiler-free review of Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s remarkable The Cabin in the Woods and praise for Who Cooks For You?, the latest release from Johnny Headband.

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Letters To Kurt by Eric Erlandson

By Emily Carney

Whether you liked Nirvana or not, if you grew up in the 1990s, your cultural map was dotted with the band’s landmark accomplishments. I vividly remember the debut of Nevermind in 1991, the Sassy magazine with Kurtney on the cover (Kurt Cobain had pink hair and he and Courtney Love both looked like elegant street urchins), the band’s MTV Unplugged, Kurt’s first horrifying suicide attempt in Rome (my best friend told me about it the morning it happened at the bus stop—we had just turned 16), and the world premiere of Hole’s “Miss World” video about a week later.

Then April 8, 1994 swung by. Along with it, the awful news of Kurt Cobain’s suicide by gun. My best friend again called my house after school and told me authorities thought they’d found Kurt’s body in his house. Of course, that nomenclature is never good. Even though I was not a super-fan, I was genuinely saddened by the awful manner of Kurt’s demise. The grief was only exacerbated two months later by the overdose death of Hole’s bassist, the beautiful, gifted Kristen Pfaff. It felt, genuinely, like all of my era’s talents were being plucked off, one by one.
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Postcards From Divine, by Noah Brodie, Dan Marshall, and Michael O’Quinn

By Eric Weber

In John Waters’ book, Shock Value (1981) he writes:

“The oddest question I ever get from college students is ‘Do you have parents?’ The first time I heard this, I was shocked. Did they think somebody found me under a rock and dragged me home? What person in his right mind would clone me, I wonder. ‘Everyone has parents, ‘ I tell them. ‘Even Lee Harvey Oswald had a great mother.’ I guess by this question they are tactfully trying to ask, ‘What on earth could your parents think of you?’ and this I can see, because whenever I read about some lunatic I admire, this question is the first thing that pops into my mind.”

One could easily imagine this question being asked of Divine—the late, great character actor who rose to fame as the female star of several of John Waters’ films. From Mondo Trasho (1969) to Hairspray (1988), Divine played a gamut of roles that ranged from deranged model (Female Trouble, 1974) to loving mother (Polyester, 1981). Divine became so associated with his over-the-top female characters, that many felt that he was in fact authentically female and lived up to his moniker, “The Filthiest Person Alive”—a title his character earned in the notorious Pink Flamingos (1972).
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Valerie Solanas: Who Shot Andy Warhol?

By Less Lee Moore

In June of 1968, a woman named Valerie Solanas rode the elevator up to The Factory, Andy Warhol’s loft. In the elevator with her was Andy Warhol himself. In the Factory’s office was Mario Amaya, an art editor from London; Fred Hughes, one of Warhol’s assistants; and Paul Morrissey, Warhol’s executive producer. Morrissey walked into the bathroom. Within a few minutes, Solanas pulled out a .32 caliber gun and shot Warhol three times. She then shot Amaya in the hip. Hughes begged her to stop. When she fired the gun at him, it jammed. Just then, the elevator doors opened and Hughes told her get on. So she did.

Screencap from I Shot Andy Warhol, 1996

Soon after, Valerie turned herself in to police. When questioned by the media outside of the police station, Valerie said that her reasons for shooting Warhol were “very involved. Read my manifesto and it will tell you what I am.” Solanas served a three-year sentence for attempted murder and died in 1988.

Over 40 years have passed since the shooting, but people are still asking the question “Why?”

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The Cult Of Hunter S. Thompson

By Paul Casey

“We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”

Coupled with Bruce Robinson’s Withnail & I, there is no more cherished catharsis for the teenage crowd than the work of Hunter Stockton Thompson. Or the drunk crowd. Or the drugged crowd. Or the drunk and drugged teenage crowd. Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and the wonderful Terry Gilliam adaptation starring Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro, are the blueprint for so much debauchery and casual destruction. Apart from the compelling joys and miseries of sucking from the Gonzo cock of hyperbolic substance use, Thompson is one of the most emulated crusaders in the truth game.

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Scandal In The 21st Century: The Different Faces Of Irene Adler

By Lisa Anderson

To Sherlock Holmes, she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It’s not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one in particular, were abhorrent to his cold, precise, but admirably balanced mind . . . He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer . . . And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.
—”A Scandal in Bohemia,” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

In recent years, two new versions of the stories of Sherlock Holmes have captivated viewing audiences. One is the film version starring Robert Downey, Jr. The other is the BBC Television version with Benedict Cumberbatch as the lead. Both versions make good use of characters that have either been portrayed very differently or not used as extensively in other incarnations of Holmes stories. For example, both Jude Law and Martin Freeman portray John Watson as a much better sidekick than did Nigel Bruce and others. Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock’s smarter older brother, gets screen time and importance in both the movies and the television show. However, none of Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters has seen their stock increase more in these retellings than Irene Adler. SPOILERS BEHIND THE CUT!
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Forbidden Fruit: Banned, Censored, and Challenged Books from Dante to Harry Potter

By Less Lee Moore

When you think of banned books, you might think of Henry Miler’s Tropic of Cancer (1934), J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye (1951), Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five (1969), or Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). However, the practice of censorship and banning books reaches back to Socrates and the fifth century BCE. As Pearce J. Carefoote’s Forbidden Fruit: Banned, Censored, and Challenged Books from Dante to Harry Potter explains, the practice did not end when the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance.

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Best Of 2011: Danny R. Phillips

In terms of entertainment, 2011 has been kind of slow for me. Electronic acts, dubstep, and boring indie bands named after animals or things you have no hope of pronouncing in the correct way, have been a plague on the music scene like the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918. OK, that may be a bit exaggerated but you get the idea.

There have been, however, some things in music, movies, and the written word that have gotten my attention in 2011. Here’s my list of both new and old gems I’ve discovered and revisited in the past year. I hope you find my list enjoyable and informative. If not, better luck next year.
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