Mike Sager is an august purveyor of New Journalism, giving frontline reports on everything from the rapper Ice Cube to expat Vietnam vets in Thailand to suburban-Maryland Tupperware saleswomen. His new book, Revenge of the Donut Boys, collects highlights of more than 20 years worth of Sager’s articles for many leading magazines, mostly Esquire, for […]
Adam Sobsey
Bio: Adam Sobsey (@sobsey) writes about wine and culture for INDY Week.Twitter: http://twitter.com/sobsey
Posted inArt
Godspeed: Racing Is My Religion
Godspeed: Racing Is My Religion By L.D. Russell Continuum Books, 182 pp. Here is what many nonbelievers see when they glimpse a NASCAR race on television: A bunch of billboards on wheels turning left at insane speeds, perpetrating unconscionable air and noise pollution and pointless death, and wasting an increasingly precious natural resource. Hooting and […]
Posted inGuides
Reading
We’ve got a busy book fall around the Triangle, with the highlights including visits from at least four Pulitzer Prize winners and one National Book Award winner, plenty of local authors and subjects, and topics ranging from Sudan to Cuba, NASCAR to transcendentalism. All of these events are free, by the way. You probably don’t […]
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New Stories From the South: More than Confederates and kudzu
“In those days, the 1970s, I think the newness had not yet fully arrived. Senescence was still king […] I was extremely fortunate to find myself in the midst of such a falling-apart time; one moribund culture, disintegrating. The Old South was not so much giving way to the New South as, instead, to the […]
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Whatever happened to public swimming pools?
Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America By Jeff Wiltse University of North Carolina Press, 275 pp. The swimming you’re enjoying this summer is probably in a backyard pool, at a private club or at an ocean resort. Long ago, though, you’d almost surely have been at a public pool. Jeff Wiltse’s […]
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Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician
Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician By Daniel Wallace Doubleday, 257 pp. Daniel Wallace’s fourth novel has a whimsical title and cover. It is dedicated to his kids, the youngest of whom provides the protagonist’s first name and half of his last. But don’t judge this book by its cover or its dedication page. Very […]
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Ken Rumble’s rhythmic expressions of Washington, D.C.
Key Bridge By Ken Rumble Carolina Wren Press, 71 pp. Key Bridge starts with a bang. In a poem called “15.may.2000,” the narrator has sex with “Jenny, blond, doesn’t/ like sex in bed… in an empty lot at the west end of Georgetown.” The presumably white speaker observes, in re the police, “that if seen […]
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Ann Fessler’s adoption project, in print and on display in Durham
The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler Penguin Books, 2006, 362 pp. Installations by Ann Fessler Center for Documentary Studies Through July 8 “I’m adopted.” That’s a sentence you’ve probably heard before. “I gave up a child for adoption.” That isn’t, probably. When you read it, did you thinkin that dark, uncorrected moment before […]
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Durham author David Guy distills a lifetime of work
Jake Fades: A Novel of Impermanence by David Guy Trumpeter Books, 210 pp. It makes perfect sense that the central setting in David Guy’s new novel, Jake Fades, is a bar in Cambridge, Mass. You can imagine pulling up a stool next to the narrator, Hankyou feel like you know him from somewhereand after a […]
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The all-embracing fiction of Alex Mindt
Male of the Species by Alex Mindt Delphinium Books, 239 pp. Alex Mindt gets around. According to his bio, he “has lived in every region in the country” and has had more than 50 jobs, from strawberry picker to professional gambler. He has written plays and screenplays, including the award-winning feature film Nowheresville, which he […]
