Selected Essays & Reviews
“The Fly In The Ointment”
Preface to 100 Greatest Singers list
Rolling Stone, November 2008
“The Departed” – Review of Roberto Bolano’s 2666
New York Times Book Review
“Infidels” The Cambridge Book of Bob Dylan
Cambridge University Press, 2009
“Kinks”
The Encyclopedia Project 2009
“Things To Remember”
TAR Magazine, October 2008
“Dylan Smut”
Hang the DJ: An Alternative Book of Music Lists,
Angus Cargill, ed., 2008
“Art of Darkness”
New York Times op-ed, 9/20/08
“We Happy Fakes”
The Guardian [UK], 9/1/07
“Edward’s End”
Review of Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach
New York Times Book Review, 6/3/07
“The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism”
Harper’s Magazine, Feb., 2007
“Names”
How I Write: the Secret Lives of Authors
Rizzoli, 2007
“Stray Gems”
sidebar, Rolling Stone, August, 2006
“The Genius of Bob Dylan”
Rolling Stone, August, 2006
“Being James Brown”
Rolling Stone, June, 2006
“Brooklyn’s Trojan Horse:
An Open Letter to Frank Gehry”
Slate Magazine, 6/19/06
“Brando’s Last Stand”
Rolling Stone, May 2006
“A Figure in the Castle”
Review of Robert Calasso’s K.
New York Times Book Review, 5/1/05
“An Orchestra of Light That was Electric”
Black Clock, 2006
“Uncried Tears”
O Magazine, June 2005
“Donald Sutherland’s Buttocks”
Nerve, March 2005
“So, Who’s Perkus Tooth, Anyway?”
Washington Post Book World, 2005
“The Beards”
The New Yorker, 2005
Commencement Address
Bennington College, June 2005
Liner Note for Unfaithfully Yours DVD
Criterion Collection, July 2005
“Rick James”
New York Times Magazine, December 2004
“Otis Redding’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”
Black Clock, 2004
“Two Or Three Things I Dunno About Cassavetes”
Granta, July 2004
Review of Christopher Ricks
New York Times Book Review, June 2004
“Books Are Sandwiches”
Book Club Cookbook, 2004
“Bowels of Compassion”
Mortification, 2004
“Patchwork Planet”
Brooklyn Magazine, 2004
Squib on Gaddis’s “The Recognitions”
Conjunctions, 2004
“Esplanade Fugue”
Lincoln Center Review, 2004
“My Marvel Years”
London Review of Books, April 2004
“Clerk”
Brick, 2004
“The Loneliest Book I’ve Read”
Remarkable Reads, 2004
“On It Happened In Boston?”
LA Weekly, 2003
Squib on Stan Brakhage DVD
Rolling Stone, Summer 2003
“Uncertainty Principal”
Village Voice, May 2003
“Charles Dickens, Animal Novelist”
The Believer, April 2003
Liner Note for The Killers DVD
Criterion Collection, 2003
Edward Dahlberg’s Recipe for Crocodile Tears”
Harper’s, February 2003
“Top Five Depressed Superheroes”
Shout Magazine, December 2002
“My Egyptian Cousin”
London Review of Books, December 2002
“You Don’t Know Dick”
Bookforum, Summer 2002
“Alone at the Movies”
The New Yorker, Summer 2002
“People Who Died”
GQ, August 2002
Review of “Spiderman”
London Review of Books, June 2002
“Hazel”
Cabinet Magazine, Spring 2002
Review of New York Characters
New York Observer, December 10, 2001
“Stop Making Sense”
Rolling Stone, October 25, 2001
“Dear Stacy”
Open Letters, 2001
Squib on Geoff Dyer
Entertainment Weekly, 2001
“Further Reports in a Dead Language”
Rolling Stone, September 2001
“Nine Failures of the Imagination”
New York Times, September 2001
“The Man in the Back Row Has a Question”
Paris Review, Summer 2001
“On The Clash”
New York Observer, 2001
“Who’s Afraid of Doctor Strange?”
Bookforum, Summer 2001
“Birthday greeting to Bob Dylan”
Rolling Stone, June 2001
“Yoked in Gowanus”
Brick Magazine, June 2001
Review of Glue by Irvine Welsh
New York Times, May 2001
“In Memoriam Joey Ramone”
New York Times Op-Ed, April 2001
Liner notes for The Maggies’ CD Breakfast at Brelreck’s
March 2001
“Defending The Searchers”
Tin House, Winter 2000–2001
“The Williamsburg Trilogy”
Tin House #2, 2000
“Book Tour Diaries”
Bold Type, November 2000
“The Lair of the Collector”
House and Gardens, 2000
On the subway series
New York Newsday, October 2000
Review of When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
Bookforum, Fall 2000
“Hitchhiking in Nevada Is Illegal”
Rolling Stone, July 2000
Bernard Malamud, Philip K. Dick, Kazuo Ishiguro:
Contributions to the Salon Guide to Contemporary Authors
August 2000
Review of Despair and Other Stories by Andre Alexis
New York Times, January 9, 2000
Review of Tough Tough Toys for Tough Tough Boys
by Will Self
New York Times, June 20, 1999
Review of Past Forgetting by Jill Robinson
Salon, October 1999
“Five Terrific Novels
Overshadowed by their Film Versions”
Salon, October 1999
On Rod Serling
Gadfly, September–October 1999
Review of The Ground Beneath Her Feet
by Salman Rushie
Village Voice, April 1999
Review of A Cursing Brain: Histories of Tourette Syndrome
by Howard Kushner
Salon, April 1999
“Mistakes Were Made,” an exchange with Ray Davis
New York Review of Science Fiction, December 1998
Review of “Hurlyburly”
Salon, December 1998
Review of More Than Night by James Naremore
Bookforum, 1998
Review of “Gods and Monsters”
Salon, November 1998
Review of Totally, Tenderly, Tragically by Philip Lopate
Salon, November 1998
Review of “Happiness”
Salon , October 1998
Review of “Hit Me”
Salon, October 1998
Review of Gary Cooper: An American Hero
by Jeffrey Meyers
Salon, June 1998
“The Squandered Promise of Science Fiction”
Village Voice, June 1998
On Charles Finney’s “The Unholy City”
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October/November 1998
“Body, Landscape, Symptom”
Boldtype, May 1998
Review of Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood
by Todd McCarthy
Salon, July 1997
On John Wayne
Salon, July 1997
On John Barth’s End of the Road
Boldtype, March 1997
On Shirley Jackson
Salon, January 1997
Profile of Jonathan Richman
Pulse! October 1996
Review of Virtual Light by William Gibson
New York Review of Science Fiction, November 1993
Review of Elvissey by Jack Womack
New York Review of Science Fiction, February 1993
“Daylight Noir: Raymond Chandler’s Unreal City”
photographs by Catherine Corman,