Jordan

Bruna Guedes

Husain Kothari

FRNK

Uendi Prifti

Abdul Hasib

Loughlin Sullivan

Delaney Knopp

Auriel W

Blake Molmen

Dani Shahar

Luis Javier Campos nieto

Few American lives are stranger, more action-packed, or wilder than that of Hunter S. Thompson. Born a rebel in Louisville, Kentucky, Thompson spent a lifetime channeling his energy and insight into such landmark works as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - and his singular and provocative style challenged and revolutionized writing.Now, for the first time ever, Jann Wenner and Corey Seymour have interviewed the Good Doctor's friends, family, acquaintances and colleagues and woven their memories into a brilliant oral biography. From Hell's Angels leader Sonny Barger to Ralph Steadman to Jack Nicholson to Jimmy Buffett to Pat Buchanan to Marilyn Manson and Thompson's two wives, son, and longtime personal assistant, more than 100 members of Thompson's inner circle bring into vivid focus the life of a man who was even more complicated, tormented, and talented than any previous portrait has shown. It's all here in its uncensored glory: the creative frenzies, the love affairs, the drugs and booze and guns and explosives and, ultimately, the tragic suicide. As Thompson was fond of saying, "Buy the ticket, take the ride."

I'm telling you these people are Satanists. As I sit here, they are satanists. Look, look, the world is full of these kind of things - black masses, mutilations. Mutilations. The incubus, the succubus. [Editor's note: Yes, I am making a The 'Burbs quote medley here. Pretend I'm Sting trying to satisfy an audience who only came to hear The Police hits when he wants to push his new album.] Ray Peterson: [chanting] I'm not going to listen to this, I'm not going to hear this now.Art: Ray! Ray! You're chanting![points to book]Art: Ray, unconscious chanting! You're chanting!Ray Peterson: [continues chanting with fingers in ears]Art: [chants] I want to kill everyone. Satan is good. Satan is our pal.Art: Hey, once they get in here...[points to Ray's head]Art: ...it's over, pal. Justin Bieber walks away from the crossroads paved in his gold records with his devil given talent to be awesomely incredible and derring-do to sell hair care products. The pop culture history books are riddled with such mysteries. "How does anyone sound so damned good?!" Oh wait, I meant that whole Robert Johnson myth. Music and satan the angels hand in hand doing the lazy person's business. I want to be evil but I don't really feel like it, you know? But these metal guys in Norway were like no, I want to shred with real power. I want to do six evil things after my shredded wheat. Paint yourself to look like a mortician's Kiss cover band and go be a real fucking prick to everyone you meet. Black Metal is born.That's what this Euronymous guy must have said when he started his band Mayhem because this Euronymous was a total bastard. Think about what Kiss look like when you see them without makeup. They look just as ugly with and without makeup as Kiss. Euronymous must've worn the makeup when he saw Gene Simmons get some. He must have told his prospective boyfriends how satanic sodomy was. "The bible is against it, man! You wanna?" [Editors note: I haven't listened to Mayhem. The photos are so silly.] When his bandmate Dead (my favorite person in the whole story because he demonstrated a sense of humor once. His suicide note read "Pardon all of the blood". My favorite person because he was dark because it was in him, not to impose on others) blows his brains out this asshole makes jewelry out of the leftovers (and I mean leftovers as in what he didn't put in a stew) for his closest friends. I bet the people left out were all "What a bastard! I thought we were friends!" I guess that's what being evil was all about. Going by all accounts of his personality it was all for show to live the image of EVIL. He is a "communist". The kind that also believes in making money for himself, as they all do despite being boring and running off at the mouth constantly about anti consumerism. Some time later he says he's a Nazis and one of the other guys in the scene didn't buy it. "No, sadly he's a communist" (because that's the tragedy here). His record shop stiffs the bands. No one much likes Euronymous. When does it stop being an act or you're just an asshole? (One time Dead couldn't sleep because Euronymous wouldn't stop playing synth music. What an asshole! Dead goes to sleep in the woods and the asshole follows him outside to shoot at birds. I'm just saying.) Euronymous is murdered by Burzum front-man Varg Vikernes aka Count Grishnakh (yes, from The Lord of the Rings. His band was originally called Uruk-hai). The self defense isn't hard to believe in that Euronymous was the kind of guy that would go around talking big talk about how he was going to kill Vikernes. The cover-up plot was pretty ludicrous, though (he rented a video and a friend was supposed to use his ATM card for a time alibi. Ever heard of surveillance cameras?). My favorite bit was his accomplice who claimed to not even know Euronymous. He was in his band! They were best friends! Snorre Rich came off as kind of retarded to me when he's interviewed for the book. Maybe he forgot he was in his band. He gets eight years for being there. He regrets being in prison, a bit. I wonder about Norway for giving him (he's mentally incompetent!) the same sentence they give to Eithun for killing a guy. Vikernes gets the max of twenty-one years because of the media circus. Vikernes in his 1990s prison is quite bitter that he is given over to the authorities with one eyewitness per crime. The murder seemed an afterthought to the coppers, and to Vikernes, no doubt because of the attention. It's all about the churches. (I loved it when he's defensive in the documentary about his sentence. "But here it is the max!" You better believe Americans watching would go "That's nothing!" I find it disturbing that there are a lot of people who see pictures of Norwegian prisons and WANT to go there because it is nicer than American prisons. They aren't in American prisons! It is also important to note that he didn't go to the halfway house until after he had served half of his sentence. He was allowed a computer and whines in the book about the times they take it away as punishment. This is the guy who boasted upon being arrested that he wasn't mistreated enough and they should throw him in a hole. And um... Pussy! Personally, I'm all for not treating convicts like animals until they can no longer integrate into society. It is disturbing that Norwegians are viewed as too lenient. It is disturbing that I also felt a twinge of envy for their prisons in case it ever happened to me. And these black metalists apparently rebelled because they had it too good?) They would have been caught anyway. Fellow black metal murderer Bård "Faust" Eithun bragged about his own murder of another homosexual to some chick (it was touching when Vikernes will later say that women aren't snitches except for this one "Rumanian bitch"). Everyone in the scene can't stop talking fast enough, many landing themselves in the slammer for their eagerness to talk the talk. Black metal scene seems to me to also be about talking about being an asshole as much as it is about being one. Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground should be called something like A bunch of assholes get together for a platform to spout their racist bullshit. Of course, I mean the people featured in this book. Moynihan is largely concerned with Vikernes. Fellow racist black metal murderers from different countries are also featured. Like Vikernes, the murders are of "I didn't like him" variety and the music to get attention for woes of immigrants moving into their neighborhoods. They burn churches because they had no vision to note that there were other things for their privileged and bored asses to fight against? It was the most shocking and too many other bands used photographs of holocaust victims? That's the theory of the satanic appeal, anyway. Wouldn't it be shocking? The who's who of the scene are interviewed. Some good points are made about satanism. You have to care about Christianity to begin with, right? Unless it's just an image, which it was here, whatever the reaction the perps got from their fellow citizens.There are some interesting ideas about violence banned in all Norwegian cinema and television. There has been one horror Norwegian film. Ever. I think that goes to show that the theory that violent films and horror films are to blame because they desensitize people to violence may not be as much as the story as some people want it to be. That may be why the fans found the gothic imagery and lyrics to be appealing. But why did the musical acts feel driven to crime? Is it like gangsta rappers and their prison time street cred? I was reminded repeatedly of Charles Manson and his family. Manson more than anything else. From Vikernes theories to enlist followers by attracting women (who would then attract more male followers) to his court room shenanigans to how did all of these nutjobs find each other anyway to all of the racist shit and violence. People will follow anything, right? I am amazed that there are people who listen to Varg Vikernes and think he has good things to say. Blah blah Macdonalds blah blah. Really, NO ONE else doesn't like Macdonalds? You can't hear that ANYWHERE else? So the racist shit must be true too? He ran an organization from prison and it is said that he has "leadership" qualities. He has the dull eyes of a liar who gives you nothing, the slow feet of a man going nowhere. Why does anyone follow this? If their satanism was because nothing meant anything then aren't they already done? There are present in every individual, besides his personal memories, the great "primordial" images, as Jacob Burckhardt once aptly called them, the inherited powers of human imagination as it was from time immemorial. The fact of this inheritance explains the truly amazing phenomena that certain motifs from myths and legends repeat themselves... It also explains why it is that our mental patients can reproduce exactly the same images and associations that are known to us from the old texts. The primordial images are the most ancient and the most universal "thought-forms" of humanity. They are as much feels as thoughts; indeed they lead their own independent life...Moynihan quotes from Carl Jung. In 2000 coauthor Didrik Søderlind interviewed Vikernes again. Lords of Chaos was published in 1998 and most of the interviews and photographs are from 1995 or before, with the exception of this new section. Søderlind interviews and also writes all of the sections about Norwegian history and politics. It wasn't hard to tell even without the introduction from Moynihan. I made my "Are you fucking kidding me?" face when he states that the most impressive talent of Varg Vikarnes is his ability to mythologize himself. Cut the fannish crap, Moynihan. He lies, and not all that interestingly at that. He changes his story to suit himself and again when someone is listening to him.He is quite fawning, even referring to Vikernes by his ridiculous name of "The Count". Before he is arrested he is a satanist.No, the media misrepresented me. I'm a heathen! He's a Nazis before prison, not a Nazis while in prison (although much of what he says makes this what my sub-editor says is a flaming lie), a Nazis out of prison. He talks a lot about Odinism and then in 2000 it is Aliens. He still maintains his website (I haven't looked in depth, though) and I know that he changes tact there as well (he changes his story about Moynihan! There and back again, like in The Hobbit. Sorry, I know he was firmly in camp Sauron. My apologies! Please don't bitch about me on your website). I found him difficult to listen to because I simply wasn't that interested in his ideology. Moynihan may be on to something with Jung about a black metal world that was born not made already beneath their constructed black metal world of evil posturing and make up that pulls their fibers to what is underneath. It's mindlessness again, whoops. But I think Vikernes is boring and I really don't want to listen to/read him anymore. I know that there are people in the world who want all white people already. This is my theory: They want to be violent. They want to be assholes. Yeah, Vikernes says (and also retracts and confirms as he is retracting) that he wants to walk down the street and kick someone for the pleasure of kicking them. His mother can say all of his troubles started when poor little boy Kristian (he changed his name to Varg because he thought Kristian and all of its counterparts are lame) spent a year in Iraq (his father programmed computers for Saddam) and gasp! had to spend time with non-whites. If they had to have it be REAL then they are not the average Erik who kills Lara Croft over and over again in a depressive funk (I don't know what the average Erik is like). They are not searching for alternatives to Christianity if their message is wiping out who is different. Maybe if you scratch the surface there's a Saint Olaf story in every Swede. Put on a horned helmet and rape and pillage along the Irish coastline. To the people who listen in the dark to black metal and feel themselves in death and the dark (as Vikernes points out that the Odin dark blade is in fact the light) it could be safe and natural. But the other cases in the black metal scene, these true crime stories of this book? The German teenagers who killed that boy in their school they didn't like? Also racist assholes. One of them, Sebastian, is into the neo-folk scene that is also home to racist assholes. People have always made art, right? They've expressed themselves, been violent, raged against authoritarianism. (Weeeeeell, if they want the Nazis back I would say that puts the "The Christian church is keeping us down!" thing further into the corner. According to this book the average Norwegian doesn't live their life inside a church. I can't know if that is true, of course.)I don't know what their art is like to know if it disappears into their real lives. I read a lot about living the scene. I wish I knew WHY rather than what the agenda was, I guess. My feeling is if he got what he wanted he would want something else. Whatever would get him attention. I like to scratch my head and wonder if there's something alike in people underneath the surface. If our blood carries the old myths and desires. Besides Oslo the other black metal capital is Tampa, Florida. Maybe it is our sunlight. Maybe it is their darkness. Or it is just like those stupid kids in Florida who wrote about killing another kid and "Can I borrow your X-box?" in the same breath. That breath isn't inhaled in me when it comes out of him. I'll scratch my chinny chin chin and let in another thought. I love the black metal fan Richmond character on The IT Crowd (although he calls Cradle of Filth "dark wave". Dark wave is Wolfsheim!). I guess I'll think about him for black metal fans. When he had the filth to come home to after another disappointing day. Or Dead who wanted to die from when he was a little boy but did stick around long enough to make some music. (Vikernes has dissed the filth many times. I noted that their member wears a Burzum t-shirt when photographed in this book. Not knowing much about them, mind, they strike me as poseurs who would want to attach themselves to the image of the "dangerous" Vikernes.)"Until mankind is peaceful enough not to have violence on the news, there's no point in taking it out of shows that need it for entertainment value." - from "Clueless"P.s. The best and worst part are the photographs. I wouldn't discourage any reader from checking this out for the pure cheese fest that were those promotional photos. But there's also a picture of Dead's brains blown out.

A dark year in the life of Nikki Sixx Although a member of other bands Nikki Sixx is best known as co-founder, bassist, and primary songwriter for the band Mötley Crüe.A few years ago I was on a memoir kick and I ended up reading a few written by some current and former rock stars. I was not a huge fan of Mötley Crüe but I did enjoy some of their music. So when I came across this book/journal at the library I was curious. I thought it was an interesting read with an accurate description of addiction (Although of course it is a rock star version). Nikki's journal entries from Christmas 1986 to Christmas 1987, when his drug use was apparently at it's highest. It's not pretty. Interspersed with photographs, artwork, lyrics, and other extras made it even more interesting. Kudos to Nikki Sixx for sharing such a brutal, heartbreaking, and emotional time in his life with the world.

Set at a small affluent liberal-arts college in New England eighties, The Rules of Attraction is a startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students with no plans for the future—or even the present—who become entangled in a curious romantic triangle. Bret Easton Ellis trains his incisive gaze on the kids at self-consciously bohemian Camden College and treats their sexual posturings and agonies with a mixture of acrid hilarity and compassion while exposing the moral vacuum at the center of their lives. The Rules of Attraction is a poignant, hilarious take on the death of romance.

Few novels have caused as much debate as Hubert Selby Jr.'s notorious masterpiece, Last Exit to Brooklyn, and this Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting.Described by various reviewers as hellish and obscene, Last Exit to Brooklyn tells the stories of New Yorkers who at every turn confront the worst excesses in human nature. Yet there are moments of exquisite tenderness in these troubled lives. Georgette, the transvestite who falls in love with a callous hoodlum; Tralala, the conniving prostitute who plumbs the depths of sexual degradation; and Harry, the strike leader who hides his true desires behind a boorish masculinity, are unforgettable creations. Last Exit to Brooklyn was banned by British courts in 1967, a decision that was reversed the following year with the help of a number of writers and critics including Anthony Burgess and Frank Kermode.Hubert Selby, Jr. (1928-2004) was born in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of 15, he dropped out of school and went to sea with the merchant marines. While at sea he was diagnosed with lung disease. With no other way to make a living, he decided to try writing: 'I knew the alphabet. Maybe I could be a writer.' In 1964 he completed his first book, Last Exit to Brooklyn, which has since become a cult classic. In 1966, it was the subject of an obscenity trial in the UK. His other books include The Room, The Demon, Requiem for a Dream, The Willow Tree and Waiting Period. In 2000, Requiem for a Dream was adapted into a film starring Jared Leto and Ellen Burstyn, and directed by Darren Aronofsky.'Last Exit to Brooklyn will explode like a rusty hellish bombshell over America, and still be eagerly read in 100 years'Allen Ginsberg'An urgent tickertape from hell'Spectator

Jesus' Son, the first collection of stories by Denis Johnson, presents a unique, hallucinatory vision of contemporary American life unmatched in power and immediacy and marks a new level of achievement for this acclaimed writer. In their intensity of perception, their neon-lit evocation of a strange world brought uncomfortably close to our own, the stories in Jesus' Son offer a disturbing yet eerily beautiful portrayal of American loneliness and hope.Contains:Car Crash While HitchhikingTwo MenOut on BailDundunWorkEmergencyDirty WeddingThe Other ManHappy HourSteady Hands at Seattle GeneralBeverly Home'

With the publication of Naked Lunch in 1959, William Burroughs abruptly brought international letters into the postmodern age. Beginning with his very early writing (including a chapter from his and Jack Kerouac's never-before-seen collaborative novel), Word Virus follows the arc Burroughs's remarkable career, from his darkly hilarious "routines" to the experimental cut-up novels to Cities of the Red Night and The Cat Inside. Beautifully edited and complemented by James Grauerholz's illuminating biographical essays, Word Virus charts Burroughs's major themes and places the work in the context of the life. It is an excellent tool for the scholar and a delight for the general reader. Throughout a career that spanned half of the twentieth century, William S. Burroughs managed continually to be a visionary among writers. When he died in 1997, the world of letters lost its most elegant outsider.

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