Michael Berger
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A Uniquely Literary Holiday Party (In San Francisco)
The winter is cold and dark and your fingers turn blue. Money is scarce. Mornings are the worst of all. Some of us get lonely. We reach for the bottle or the remote control. We long for free camaraderie in…
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The Undefinable Genre Of Science Fantasy
“Felicino: I thought writers were the least reliable guys when it comes to define what they’re writing. And most of them don’t really care. Gio: Well, as a reader and a writer, I care. Let’s see what they say out…
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The Letters Of Van Gogh Restored And Revisited
“In its capaciousness, the book also reminds us of a fundamental truth about Van Gogh: his ambition as a painter depended on words to give it focus and direction. We see this most obviously in the correspondence with Theo. “Writing…
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The February House: Something To Aspire To
I’ve recently been in awe of the short stories of Paul Bowles, the American ex-pat novelist, composer, and translator who lived in Morocco and wrote The Sheltering Sky and who was basically Beat before the Beats. Besides maybe Flannery O’Connor…
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Studs Terkel And The FBI
“In the 1930s, Studs Terkel applied to the FBI to be a fingerprint guy — maybe if he’d gotten the job, we would have had “CSI: Studs Terkel.” But the FBI turned him away and in 1945 began surveillance that…
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Chomsky At Guernica
“The people we call intellectuals aren’t necessarily smarter or more knowledgeable than anyone else. But they happen to have a lot of privilege, and privilege confers responsibility. And so they oughta do things. I don’t expect them to.” At Guernica…
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The Revolutionary Of Everyday Life
“We are witnessing the collapse of financial capitalism. This was easily predictable. Even among economists, where one finds even more idiots than in the political sphere, a number had been sounding the alarm for a decade or so. Our situation…
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The Leather Daddy And The Femme
There is not enough nice things you can say about the incredible varieties of sexual diversity in San Francisco. I think as Bay Area folk it’s easy to take it for granted. But all the same I find endless reasons…
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The Journal Of Albion Moonlight
“Carol wants me to write a novel: ‘You’ve met so many interesting people,’ she tells me. Very good, there was a young man and he could never get his hands on enough women. That’s a novel. There was an idiot…
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The Decline Of Hitchens, Again
A long time ago, back when I was basking in over-priced Leftism in Santa Cruz, I gave a gift to my friend: Letters To A Yong Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens. At that time Hitchens was a venom-tongued writer for the…
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Akashic Press Has A New Blog
“Living in Brooklyn (as 3/4 of the Akashic Staff does), discussions about Irony usually in end hipster-bashing sessions. Williamsburg is rendered as a mecca of self-posturing, detachment and apathy. It’s easy to be negative! Enter Trinie Dalton, who does the…
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Science Fiction Predicts The Present
“Science fiction writers don’t predict the future (except accidentally), but if they’re very good, they may manage to predict the present. Mary Shelley wasn’t worried about reanimated corpses stalking Europe, but by casting a technological innovation in the starring role of Frankenstein,…