The Brooklyn Rail
Critical Perspectives on Art, Politics and Culture
Dec 2007/Jan 2008
Express
After Mailer
by Kathy PerutzExpress
I first met Norman Mailer at a party in New York. It was the early ‘60s, I was a writer in my early twenties, Mailer was somewhere close to 40. He brought me over to the couch and we sat talking for three hours until he finally stood up and said, “I’m certainly not going to marry you.”
Of Skin and Snoods
by Williams ColeExpress
Zoe Lister-Jones is a star of the new film Arranged, the story of the friendship of two women, one an Orthodox Jew and the other a Muslim. Directed by Diane Crespo and Stefan Schaefer, the film is set in contemporary Brooklyn. Opening at the Quad Cinemas on December 14th, the film premiered at South by Southwest and went on to win the Best Narrative Feature prize at the Brooklyn Film Festival.
Crocodile Hunting at JFK
by Sabine HeinleinExpress
Rumor had it that a crocodile lived at JFK Airport—an anonymous source spilled the beans. Among talk of alligators, caymans and other wet slithering creatures, the names Dr. Feinsod and Vetport were dropped. Some measly clues and promises made over cocktails were enough to send me on a quixotic quest for the croc at JFK.
Child of War, A Memoir
by Jason Flores-WilliamsExpress
It was the beginning of the 80s and my dad Drake had made a fortune—legally, for the most part—in the business world. Vance, his identical twin brother and an outlaw, had made a bundle in the pot biz. Everyone was loaded. We moved from Houston to Santa Fe, where I started St. Francis Junior High in the middle of the seventh grade.
Robot Nation
by Linh DinhExpress
America’s national pastime is not really baseball but football. Unlike baseball, which is equally popular in Japan, Taiwan and many Latin American countries, no one else shares America’s pigskin passion, a sport in which collective rage is ritualized and celebrated, a colorful spectacle of cool violence, an American specialty.
Main Street’s Whitewashed Windows
by David VarnoExpress
Richard Hell doesn’t seem to have had a whole lot happen to him, at least not as a child. The selection he read recently at the Brooklyn Library from his autobiography, untitled and a work in progress, covered happy remembrances such as drive-in movies with his parents and sister, followed by the angst characteristic of a self-aware youth ready to be out from under authority.
