Jordan

Bruna Guedes

Husain Kothari

FRNK

Uendi Prifti

Abdul Hasib

Loughlin Sullivan

Delaney Knopp

Auriel W

Blake Molmen

Dani Shahar

Luis Javier Campos nieto

From the author of L.A. Confidential comes My Dark Places, an investigative autobiography by James Ellroy. In 1958, Ellroy's mother, Jean, was raped, killed, and dumped off a road in El Monte, California, a rundown L.A. suburb. The killer was never found, and the case was closed. It was a sordid, back-page homicide that no one remembered. Except her son.James Ellroy was ten years old when his mother died. His bereavement was complex and ambiguous: "I cried. I cranked tears out all the way to L.A. I hated her. I hated El Monte. Some unknown killer just bought me a brand-new beautiful life." He grew up obsessed with murdered women and crime. He ran from his mother's ghost.Ellroy became a writer of radically provocative and bestselling crime novels. "I wear obsession well," he says. "I've turned it into something." He tried to reclaim his mother through fiction. It didn't work. He quit running and wrote this memoir.My Dark Places is Jean and James Ellroy's story—from 1958 to all points past and up to this moment. It is the story of a brilliant homicide detective named Bill Stoner and of the investigation he and Ellroy undertook. It is also an unflinching autobiography with vivid reportage. This is James Ellroy's journey through his most forbidding memories.

Twelve-year-old Toulouse “Tull” Trotter lives on his grandfather’s vast Bel-Air parkland estate with his mother, the beautiful, drug-addicted Katrina—a landscape artist who specializes in topiary labyrinths. He spends most of his time with young cousins Lucy, “the girl detective,” and Edward, a prodigy undaunted by the disfiguring effects of Apert Syndrome. One day, an impulsive revelation by Lucy sets in motion a chain of events that changes Tull—and the Trotter family—forever.In this latter-day Thousand and One Nights, a boy seeks his lost father and a woman finds her long-lost love . . . while a family of unimaginable wealth learns that its fate is bound up with two fugitives: Amaryllis, a street orphan who aspires to be a saint, and her protector, a homeless schizophrenic, clad in Victorian rags, who is accused of a horrifying crime.

Bruce Wagner has been hailed for his powerful prose, his Swiftian satire, and the scalpel-sharp wit that has, in each of his novels, dissected and sometimes disemboweled Hollywood excess.  In his most ambitious book to date, Still Holding, Wagner immerses readers in post-September 11 Hollywood, revealing as much rabid ambition, rampant narcissism, and unchecked mental illness as ever. He infiltrates the gilded life of a superstar actor/sex symbol/practicing Buddhist, the compromised world of a young actress whose big break comes when she's hired to play a corpse on Six Feet Under, and the strange parallel universe of look-alikes -- an entire industry in which struggling actors are hired out for parties and conventions to play their famous counterparts. Alternately hilarious and heartfelt, ferocious and empathetic, Still Holding is Bruce Wagner's most expertly calibrated work.

Composed of two companion novellas, The Empty Chair is a profound, heart-wrenching piece of spiritual storytelling from Bruce Wagner, the internationally acclaimed author of such novels as Dead Stars, I’m Losing You and Force Majeure. In First Guru, a fictional Wagner narrates the tale of a Buddhist living in Big Sur, who achieves enlightenment in the horrific aftermath of his child’s suicide. In Second Guru, Queenie, an aging wild child, returns to India to complete the spiritual journey of her youth. Told in ravaged, sensuous detail to the author-narrator by two strangers on opposite sides of the country, years apart from each other, both stories illuminate the random, chaotic nature of human suffering and the miraculous strength of the human spirit. A deeply affecting and meditative reading experience, The Empty Chair is an exquisitely rendered, thought-provoking, and humbling new work.

After three decades of prodigious film work &amp; some unfortunate tabloid adventures, it's easy to forget that Woody Allen began his career as one heck of a great comedy writer. Getting Even, a collection of his late '60s magazine pieces, offers a look into Allen's bag of shtick, back when it was new. From the supposed memoirs of Hitler's barber: "Then, in January of '45, a plot by several generals to shave Hitler's moustache in his sleep failed when von Stauffenberg, in the darkness of Hitler's bedroom, shaved off one of the Führer's eyebrows instead..." Even tho the idea of writing jokes about old Adolf--or addled rabbis, or Maatjes herring--isn't nearly as fresh as it used to be, Getting Even still delivers plenty of laughs. At his best, Woody can achieve a level of transcendent craziness that no other writer can match. If you're looking for a book to dip into at random, or a gift for someone who's seen Sleeper 13 times, Getting Even is a classic, with 316,000 copies sold to date.

Woody Allen has that way of writing awkward attractions and selfish motivations that is forgiving and neat. He ties up the loose ends, but then at the same time, there is always an absurdity to the tying up. The characters will probably never be content, but somehow I, as their audience, am left content through the catharsis of watching Allen’s characters self-destruct. Despite the dissonance in the character relationships, what was secret is now in the open, the bad guy is murdered or permanently tortured with guilt, the underdog had his day, the boy found a girl. It is a good combination of satisfying and dissatisfying.This book is great. The Abraham Lincoln play cracked me up; the hospital romance was sad and smart; and the story with Madame Bovary came right while Kelly and I were having our epic battle, so that was perfect. Woody Allen is cool.[obligatory part where I say how much I completely adore Mia Farrow until the end of time.]I’m listing below my ranking of favorite to least favorite Woody Allen films. I only rank based on personal preference, not based on a weird guess at objective quality because I am a bad guesser. Also, admittedly, it’s been about six years since I’ve seen some of them, so it gets a little vague and messy in the middle.1.	Another Woman2.	Purple Rose of Cairo3.	Vicky Cristina Barcelona4.	Stardust Memories5.	Sweet and Lowdown6.	Broadway Danny Rose7.	Manhattan8.	Sleeper9.	Crimes and Misdemeanors 10.	Husbands and Wives11.	Alice12.	Interiors13.	September14.	Bananas15.	Small Time Crooks16.	Bullets Over Broadway17.	Radio Days18.	Shadows and Fog19.	Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy20.	Annie Hall21.	Play It Again, Sam22.	New York Stories23.	Take the Money and Run24.	Love and Death25.	Zelig26.	Cassandra’s Dream27.	Match Point28.	Manhattan Murder Mystery29.	Hollywood Ending30.	Midnight in Paris31.	Scoop32.	What’s Up, Tiger Lily?33.	Hannah and Her Sisters34.	Curse of the Jade Scorpion35.	Mighty Aphrodite36.	Whatever Works37.	Anything Else38.	Melinda and Melinda39.	Celebrity40.	Deconstructing HarryThat’s how the films go for me, I think. It is a very unfair list because I basically love most of them. I think you hit the “Yeah, that was pretty good” place around Hollywood Ending, but psychosomatic blindness? Yes, please. When I was in high school, my best friend’s family watched Woody Allen movies all the time, and I couldn’t stand him. He seemed so smug, saying, “Look, I write a couple of jokes and everyone forgives me screwing people over.” Gross. Then, suddenly, I hit maybe age twenty-four, and I watched Purple Rose of Cairo and got hooked. I watched everything I could get my hands on. He was no longer smug voice of screwing people over, but somehow, instead, this voice of compassion – a voice saying, “Look at how shallow we all are, but that doesn’t mean we are unimportant.” And I still value that. He combines the daily, mundane dissatisfactions of life with the epic curiosities of time travel and murrrrder and true love. What a wonderful storyteller. Purple Rose of Cairo is a good place to start.

"I am greatly relieved that the universe is finally explainable. I was beginning to think it was me." -- Woody AllenHere, in his first collection since his three hilarious classics Getting Even, Without Feathers, and Side Effects, Woody Allen has managed to write a book that not only answers the most profound questions of human existence but is the perfect size to place under any short table leg to prevent wobbling."I awoke Friday, and because the universe is expanding it took me longer than usual to find my robe," he explains in a piece on physics called "Strung Out." In other flights of inspirational sanity we are introduced to a cast of characters only Allen could imagine: Jasper Nutmeat, Flanders Mealworm, and the independent film mogul E. Coli Biggs, just to name a few. Whether he is writing about art, sex, food, or crime ("Pugh has been a policeman as far back as he can remember. His father was a notorious bank robber, and the only way Pugh could get to spend time with him was to apprehend him") he is explosively funny.In "This Nib for Hire," a Hollywood bigwig comes across an author"s book in a little country store and describes it in a way that aptly captures this magnificent volume: "Actually," the producer says, "I'd never seen a book remaindered in the kindling section before."

Without Feathers, Woody AllenWithout Feathers (1975, ISBN: 0-394-49743-0) is one of Woody Allen's best-known literary pieces. The book is a collection of essays and also features two one act plays, Death and God.Contents:Selections from The Allen NotebooksExamining Psychic PhenomenaA Guide to Some of the Lesser BalletsThe ScrollsLovborg's Women ConsideredThe Whore of Mensa [2]Death (A Play)The Early EssaysA Brief Yet Helpful Guide to Civil DisobedienceMatch Wits With Inspector FordThe Irish GeniusGod (A Play)Fabulous Tales and Mythical BeastsBut Soft. Real Soft.If the Impressionists Had Been DentistsNo Kaddish for WeinsteinFine Times: An Oral MemoirSlang Originsتاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز دهم امه ژوئن سال 2005 میلادیعنوان: بی بال و پر طنزهای وودی آلن؛ نویسنده: وودی آلن؛ مترجم: محمود شرف آزاد تهرانی؛ تهران، ماه ریز، 1383؛ در 175 ص؛ چاپ دوم 1384؛ موضوع: طنز نویسندگان امریکایی - سده 20 معنوان: بی بال و پر؛ نویسنده: وودی آلن؛ مترجم: نگار شاطریان؛ تهران، بیردگل، 1393؛ در 163 ص؛ چاپ دوم 1396؛ شابک: 9786005193817؛نقل از متن: «گزیده هایی از یادداشت های آلن: آنچه پیش رو دارید، گزیده هایی است از یادداشتهای خصوصی وودی آلن تا بدین لحظه، که در قالب مجموعه ای پسامرگ و یا بعد از فوت وی منتشر خواهد شد، هر کدام زودتر فرا برسد. هر شب را سخت تر از شب قبل به روز میرسانم. دیشب، احساس ناخوشایندی داشتم، گویی چند مرد میخواستند به اتاقم یورش بیاورند تا مرا بشویند. اما برای چه؟ مدام اشکالی شبحگونه از ذهنم میگذشت، و ساعت سه صبح زیرپوشم که روی صندلی پهن کرده بودم ناگهان به شکل کایزر با اسکیت درآمد. وقتی بالاخره خوابم برد، همان کابوس وحشتناک همیشگی را دیدم؛ یک موش خرما میخواست در یک مسابقه جایزه ام را بگیرد. دیگر هیچ کورسوی امیدی برایم باقی نمانده است. احساس میکنم اوضاعِ خورد و خوراکم بدترشده. همینطور آسمم. هر از گاهی سینه ام خس خس میکند، و بیش از پیش دچار سرگیجه میشوم. تازگیها حملاتی بهم دست میدهد، نفسم بالا نمیآید و غش میکنم. اتاقم نم گرفته و مدام اضطراب و تپش قلب دارم. تازه فهمیده ام که دستمالهایم هم ته کشیده اند. کی میتوانم یک نفس راحت بکشم؟ طرح یک داستان: مردی متوجه میشود که طوطی اش به سِمَت وزیر کشاورزی منصوب شده. حسادت مثل خوره به جانش میافتد و تصمیم میگیرد با شلیک گلوله ای خودش را بکشد، اما از بدِ روزگار، تفنگش از آن تفنگهایی است که با کشیدن ماشه یک پرچم کوچک از لوله اش درمیآید که رویش نوشته «بنگ». پرچم چشمش را از کاسه درمیآورد، اما زنده میماند. این اتفاق همچون تلنگری او را به خود میآورد و او برای نخستین بار، به لذتهای ساده ی زندگی پی میبرد، لذتهایی همچون کشاورزی یا نشستن روی شلنگ تلمبه. اندیشه ی پشت این طرح: چه میشود که انسان به کشتن رو میآورد؟ برای به دست آوردن غذاست که میکشد. تازه فقط غذا نیست: معمولاً پای یک نوشیدنی هم در میان است. آیا باید با دابلیو. ازدواج کنم؟ خب اگر حاضر نشود بقیه ی حروف اسمش را به من بگوید چه؟ شغلش را چه کار کنم؟ آخر من چگونه میتوانم از زنی به این زیبایی بخواهم رولِر دِربی را کنار بگذارد. باید تصمیم بگیرم...؛یکبار دیگر دست به خودکشی زدم. اینبار دماغم را خیس کردم و آنرا در پریز برق فروکردم. از بد روزگار، سیم کشی اتصالی کرد و محکم کوبیدم به یخچال. همچنان در افکار خودکشی غوطه میخورم. مانده ام که آیا پس از مرگ حیاتی وجود دارد، و اگر وجود دارد میتوانند این بیست دلاری ام را برایم خرد کنند؟ امروز در یک مراسم تشییع جنازه برادرم را دیدم. پانزده سالی میشد که همدیگر را ندیده بودیم، اما باز طبق معمول یک مثانه ی خوک از جیبش درآورد و پشت سر هم آن را زد توی سرم. گذر زمان کمکم کرده تا بهتر درکش کنم. بالاخره فهمیدم این حرفش که من «یک موجود مشمئزکننده ام که فقط به درد کشتار جمعی میخورم» بیشتر از روی دلسوزی است تا خشم. اما خودمانیم، همیشه از من زرنگتر بود، زرنگتر، باهوشتر، بافرهنگتر، تحصیل کرده تر. اما اینکه چرا هنوز در مک دونالد کار میکند، خدا میداند. طرح داستان: چند سگ آبی تالار کارنگی را تصرف میکنند و اپرای وُتزِک را اجرا میکنند. (تم خوبی است. اما ساختارش را چه کار کنم؟) ای خدا، این همه احساس گناه برای چیست؟ برای اینکه از پدرم متنفر بودم؟ لابد به خاطر آن ماجرای خوراک گوشت گوساله و پارمزان است. خب توی کیف پولش چه کار میکرد؟ شانس آوردم به حرفش گوش نکردم، وگرنه الان قالبزن کلاه بودم. هنوز صدایش توی گوشم است: «قالبزنی کلاه، بهترین شغل دنیا.» قشنگ یادم است وقتی بهش گفتم میخواهم نویسنده شوم چه واکنشی نشان داد. «تنها کاری که در ارتباط با نویسندگی خواهی کرد با یک جغد خواهد بود.» هنوز هم که هنوز است منظورش را از این حرف نفهمیده ام. چه مرد غمگینی! وقتی اولین نمایشنامه ام، «کیستِ گاس» در تالار لایسام روی صحنه رفت، شب افتتاحیه با کت فراگ و ماسک ضد گاز به نمایش آمد. امروز غروب زرد و قرمزی را دیدم و مرا به این اندیشه فروبرد که چقدر حقیرم! البته، دیروز هم که باران میآمد همین فکر آمد سراغم. دوباره احساس تنفر از خود و افکار خودکشی بر من چیره شد و دست به خودکشی زدم، اینبار با نفس کشیدن کنار یک بازاریاب بیمه. داستان کوتاه: یک روز صبح مردی از خواب بیدار میشود و میفهمد که به کفی طبی خودش تبدیل شده. (این ایده در لایه های گوناگونی قابل اجراست. از دیدگاه روانشناسی، جوهر اصلی آثار کروگر، شاگرد فروید، است که کاشف جنسیت در بیکن نیز بوده.) امیلی دیکینسون تا چه حد در اشتباه بود! امید «موجودی با پر و بال» نیست. اینگونه که پیداست، آن موجود دارای پر و بال برادرزاده ی من است. باید او را پیش یک متخصص در زوریخ ببرم. تصمیم گرفته ام نامزدیم را با دابلیو. به هم بزنم. او نوشته های من را درک نمیکند. همین دیشب گفت که «نقدی بر واقعیت متافیزیکی» او را یاد فیلم «فرودگاه» میاندازد. حرفمان شد و او دوباره موضوع بچه ها را پیش کشید، ولی من قانعش کردم که بچه ها زیادی کوچکند. آیا من به خدا اعتقاد دارم؟ تا پیش از تصادف مادرم اعتقاد داشتم. ماجرا از این قرار است که مادرم روی یک چونه گوشت افتاد و گوشت در طحالش فرورفت. الان ماههاست که در کماست و نمیتواند هیچکاری انجام دهد به جز این که آواز «گرانادا» را برای یک شاه ماهی خیالی بخواند. چرا این زن در بهار زندگی اش، به چنین روزی افتاده است؟ چون در جوانی در برابر سُنتها ایستاده و هنگام ازدواج یک پاکت کاغذی روی سرش کشیده است؟ چگونه میتوانم به خدایی اعتقاد داشته باشم وقتی همین هفته ی پیش زبانم بین غلتک دستگاه تایپ برقی گیر کرد؟ شک و تردید تمام وجودم را فراگرفته. اگر همه چیز توهم باشد و هیچ چیزی وجود نداشته باشد چه؟ اگر اینطور باشد که بدون شک پولی که بابت خرید فرشم دادم ارزشش را نداشته است. کاش خدا نشانه ای برایم میفرستاد! مثلاً یک حساب پرپول در یک بانک سوئیسی به نامم باز میکرد.» پایان نقل. ا. شربیانی

The Manchurian Candidate meets South Park—Chuck Palahniuk’s finest novel since the generation-defining Fight Club.“Begins here first account of operative me, agent number 67 on arrival Midwestern American airport greater _____ area. Flight _____. Date _____. Priority mission top success to complete. Code name: Operation Havoc.”Thus speaks Pygmy, one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the United States, disguised as exchange students, to live with typical American families and blend in, all the while planning an unspecified act of massive terrorism. Palahniuk depicts Midwestern life through the eyes of this thoroughly indoctrinated little killer, who hates us with a passion, in this cunning double-edged satire of an American xenophobia that might, in fact, be completely justified. For Pygmy and his fellow operatives are cooking up something big, something truly awful, that will bring this big dumb country and its fat dumb inhabitants to their knees.It’s a comedy. And a romance.

Alternate Cover Edition can be found here. Made into a major motion picture starring Johnny Depp, The Rum Diary—a national bestseller and New York Times Notable Book—is Hunter S. Thompson’s brilliant love story of jealousy, treachery, and violent lust in the Caribbean.Begun in 1959 by a twenty-two-year-old Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary is a brilliantly tangled love story of jealousy, treachery, and violent alcoholic lust in the Caribbean boomtown that was San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the late 1950s. The narrator, freelance journalist Paul Kemp, irresistibly drawn to a sexy, mysterious woman, is soon thrust into a world where corruption and get-rich-quick schemes rule and anything (including murder) is permissible. Exuberant and mad, youthful and energetic, this dazzling comedic romp provides a fictional excursion as riveting and outrageous as Thompson’s Fear and Loathing books.

Misty Wilmot has had it. Once a promising young artist, she’s now stuck on an island ruined by tourism, drinking too much and working as a waitress in a hotel. Her husband, a contractor, is in a coma after a suicide attempt, but that doesn’t stop his clients from threatening Misty with lawsuits over a series of vile messages they’ve found on the walls of houses he remodeled.Suddenly, though, Misty finds her artistic talent returning as she begins a period of compulsive painting. Inspired but confused by this burst of creativity, she soon finds herself a pawn in a larger conspiracy that threatens to cost hundreds of lives. What unfolds is a dark, hilarious story from America’s most inventive nihilist, and Palahniuk’s most impressive work to date.

You do not talk about Fight Club, but...Upon winning the Oregon Book Award for best novel and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, Chuck Palahniuk’s visionary debut novel, Fight Club, was shot to the veins of mainstream fiction. Following the success of its 1999 film adaptation directed by David Fincher, Fight Club gained cult classic status and has become a disturbingly accurate interpretation of our modern world.The unnamed male narrator, suffering from a long streak of insomnia, finds cure by attending cancer support groups. But when Marla Singer—a sallow, heavy-smoking nihilist—enters the evening meetings and mirrors his own fraud, his insomnia returns, so he confronts Singer to split schedules with him.On the night when his condominium mysteriously blows up, he calls Tyler Durden, whom he had previously met—under strange circumstances—on a beach. They agree to meet at a bar, where, after drinking, Durden asks him a favor, “I want you to hit me as hard as you can.” The narrator swings the punch that cradled Fight Club into the world. Shortly, a multitude of men with white-collar jobs join them. Every weekend, in the parking lots and basements of bars, they hold these late-hour no-holds-barred-and-barefisted fights that “go on as long as they have to.”These one-on-one melees curiously evoke psychotherapeutic effects—resembling that of enlightenment—within the men: they are reborn from their entombed lives.Fight Club soon evolves into Project Mayhem, an anarchic army led by Durden, who seeks to fulfill his visions of global enlightenment through organized chaos, public unrest, and demolition.Fight Club is a social satire on the dehumanizing effects of consumerism: alienation brought by chronic materialism, illusory comforts, overindulgence, and career and lifestyle obsessions fueled by advertising. “The modern world is for business—not for the people,” as what the great psychoanalyst Carl Jung said.“It’s only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do anything.” Skillfully fusing Zen elements with Durden’s extremist ideologies, Palahniuk has written a provocative expression of metaphysical rebellion. The collective revolt against the existential vacuum is Durden’s nucleus and what draws men toward him.Fight Club’s noir ambience and the solid economy of its prose are reminiscent of Albert Camus’s The Stranger, but with the sharp nonlinear narration executing its plot; inheriting Kurt Vonnegut’s dark humor, Chuck Palahniuk is among today’s distinct and intriguing voices.

Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be “saved” by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor’s life, go on to send checks to support him. When he’s not pulling this stunt, Victor cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops for action, visits his addled mom, and spends his days working at a colonial theme park. His creator, Chuck Palahniuk, is the visionary we need and the satirist we deserve.

I recently went to Las Vegas for the first, and probably only, time in my life. I hadn't read this book in years, and previously, it hadn't even been my favorite Hunter S. Thompson work. Thompson is dearly missed by many people, and on a personal level, I miss him deeply. He spoke to a true astonishment at the complete, unrelenting fuckedupedness of America and her politics, and he did it with a bite that was deserved and unmatched. He probably could have been a very rich super-novelist of popular, uninspired filth. He probably could have been a brilliant novelist of any kind. But he chose to do what he did, and he did it better than any of his generation. Like Mark Twain, he chronicled American stupidity in the tongue of his generation, and he captured it perfectly, from the insanity of the drug experience to the depravity of American politics. For years, no work of his stood out to me as much as Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 or the Gonzo letters. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, to me, wasn't his best work. Then I went to Vegas. Suddenly, all the subtle differences between this and his other work made sense, and I realized that he had captured the true tackiness of the truest tacky city on the entire planet (though Dubai with their fucking Island fantasies are likely to take over soon). Fear &amp; Loathing in Las Vegas IS Las Vegas. It's a nightmare, a joke, a blunder of comical, cosmically-fucked proportions. It's not Sin City. It's where Sin goes to die when it's embarrassed for itself. It's where families go on vacations with ten-year-olds, children who get handed fliers for prostitutes. It's the living, pulsing, filthing embodiment of the Holy Dollar. It's sensory overload on a scale drugs can't equal, a place where you almost have to take a brimful of Valium and a pint of ether to feel normal and not feel utterly ashamed at the state of the human condition. It would make you want to blow your brains out if it weren't so goddamned fun, even if you're gay, you hate gambling and hookers make your brain itch. Yet you never, ever feel like it is evil or subversive or curious in any way. It's just about a buck, and every other blink reminds you of it. This is a place where Hunter S. Thompson could easily mingle with a law enforcement convention and not get noticed. This is a place where a lawyer could leave you with a hotel bill. This is a place where no questions get asked because no answers would make sense, and the only thing profound about any of it is that you know, on a gut level, that all the oil used to produce all the plastic used to build that city no doubt funded an island shaped like Australia that was built off the coast of the UAE over the weekend. This novel will never cease to be important, and one day, as a cultural artifact of a forgotten culture from a forgotten nation, it will be one of the most important anthropological pieces in existence. I wish he'd survived the Bush administration. We need this man.NC

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader. Set in a place beyond good and evil - literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul - it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose.

A brilliant satire of mass culture and the numbing effects of technology, White Noise tells the story of Jack Gladney, a teacher of Hitler studies at a liberal arts college in Middle America. Jack and his fourth wife, Babette, bound by their love, fear of death, and four ultramodern offspring, navigate the rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. Then a lethal black chemical cloud, unleashed by an industrial accident, floats over their lives, an "airborne toxic event" that is a more urgent and visible version of the white noise engulfing the Gladneys—the radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, and TV murmurings that constitute the music of American magic and dread.

With the publication of Bright Lights, Big City in 1984, Jay McInerney became a literary sensation, heralded as the voice of a generation. The novel follows a young man, living in Manhattan as if he owned it, through nightclubs, fashion shows, editorial offices, and loft parties as he attempts to outstrip mortality and the recurring approach of dawn. With nothing but goodwill, controlled substances, and wit to sustain him in this anti-quest, he runs until he reaches his reckoning point, where he is forced to acknowledge loss and, possibly, to rediscover his better instincts. This remarkable novel of youth and New York remains one of the most beloved, imitated, and iconic novels in America.

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.

Guns of the Patriots features an aging and exhausted Solid Snake in the middle of a futuristic battlefield. In spite of his failing body, Sn...

LICORICE PIZZA is the story of Alana Kane and Gary Valentine growing up, running around and falling in love in the San Fernando Valley, 1973. Written and Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, the film tracks the treacherous navigation of first love.

2021 film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Faced with the impending dissolution of The French Dispatch, a factual weekly report on various subjects, old-school editor-in-chief Arthur Howitzer Jr. assembles the crème de la crème of the magazine's loyal expatriate journalists for one final issue. Against the backdrop of picturesque Ennui-sur-Blasé, Paris, France, three main articles unfold, pivoting around tormented genius artists, statuesque prison officers, flamboyant critics, moody idealists, conflicted ace reporters, legendary chefs, and, of course, the police.

Smith's everyday life in the dorm - hanging out with his arty, sarcastic best friend Stella, hooking up with a beautiful free spirit named London, lusting for his gorgeous but dim surfer roommate Thor - all gets turned upside-down after one fateful, terrifying night.

Paris, spring 1968. While most students take the lead in the May 'revolution', a French poet's twin son Theo and daughter Isabelle enjoy the good life in his grand Paris home. As film buffs they meet and 'adopt' modest, conservatively educated Californian student Matthew. With their parents away for a month, they drag him into an orgy of indulgence of all senses, losing all of his and the last of their innocence. A sexual threesome shakes their rapport, yet only the outside reality will break it up.

Disturbing, dark, low-budget independent film about teen-agers in New York City. The story focuses on Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick), a teen who has a goal to de-flower as many virgins as he can. When one of his old encounters discovers that she is H.I.V.-positive, after only one encounter with a guy, Telly remains undaunted.

Dean Pereira and Cindy Heller Pereira are a young, working class married couple - Dean currently working as a painter, and Cindy working as a nurse in a medical clinic - with a young daughter named Frankie. Despite their relatively tender ages, they are both ravaged by the life they've eked out together and by the experiences they've had leading into their marriage. Dean, a high school drop out, comes from a broken home, where he never really had a mother figure. He never saw himself getting married or having a family despite falling in love at first sight with Cindy. He doesn't have any professional ambition beyond his current work - which he enjoys since he feels he can knock off a beer at 8 o'clock in the morning without it affecting his work - although Cindy believes he has so much more potential in life. Cindy also comes from a dysfunctional family, with her own mother and father not setting an example of a harmonious married or family life. One of her previous serious relationships was with Bobby Ontario, that relationship which has a profound affect on many aspects of her marriage to Dean. Dean and Cindy head off on an overnight getaway together without Frankie, the getaway which may provide a clearer picture if their marriage can survive its many issues.

It's November 30, 1962. Native Brit George Falconer, an English professor at a Los Angeles area college, is finding it difficult to cope with life. Jim, his personal partner of sixteen years, died in a car accident eight months earlier when he was visiting with family. Jim's family were not going to tell George of the death or accident, let alone allow him to attend the funeral. This day, George has decided to get his affairs in order before he will commit suicide that evening. As he routinely and fastidiously prepares for the suicide and post suicide, George reminisces about his life with Jim. But George spends this day with various people, who see a man sadder than usual and who affect his own thoughts about what he is going to do. Those people include Carlos, a Spanish immigrant/aspiring actor/gigolo recently arrived in Los Angeles; Charley, his best friend who he knew from England, she who is a drama queen of a woman who romantically desires her best friend despite his sexual orientation; and Kenny Potter, one of his students, who seems to be curious about his professor beyond English class.

Smart-but-ineffectual journalist Dan "We use euphemisms!" cannot decide between his girlfriend, loving-but-clingy waitress Alice, or his lover cold-but-intellectual photographer Anna; herself indecisive between Dan and honest-but-thuggish "You're bloody gorgeous!" doctor Larry. The film puts the four leading characters in a box and strips them apart.

In this study of Generation X manners, Lelaina Pierce (Winona Ryder), the valedictorian of her college class, camcords her friends in a mock documentary of posteducation life. Troy Dyer (Ethan Hawke) is her best friend, a perpetually unemployed musical slacker. Vickie Miner (Janeane Garofalo) is a manager at the Gap who worries about the results of an A.I.D.S. test, while Sammy Gray (Steve Zahn) has problems grappling with his sexuality. When Lelaina meets Michael Grates (Ben Stiller), an earnest video executive who takes her homemade video to his MTV-like station, she must decide what she values - the materialism of yuppie Michael or the philosophical musings of Troy.

Grady Tripp is a professor/writer living in Pittsburgh who is struggling with writer's block. Whilst doing this, he also manages to get the chancellor pregnant. In the meantime, he and a college student, James Leer are trying to find a rare jacket once owned by Marilyn Monroe, and a college girl, Hannah Green boarding with Grady has a bit of a crush on him.

A man about forty years of age tells the story from when he was a teenager in upscale suburban Detroit of his and three of his friends' fascination with the mysterious and doomed Lisbon sisters. In 1974, the sisters were seventeen year old Therese, sixteen year old Mary, fifteen year old Bonnie, fourteen year old Lux, and thirteen year old Cecilia. Their fascination still remains as they try to piece together the entire story. The sisters were mysteries if only because of having a strict and overprotective upbringing by their father, who taught math at the girls' private co-ed school, and overly devout Catholic mother, who largely dictated the household rules. The story focuses primarily on two incidents and the resulting situations on the girls' lives. The first was an action by Cecilia to deal with her emotions over her life. And the second was the relationship between Lux - the sister who pushed the boundaries of the household rules most overtly in doing what most teenagers want to do - and Trip Fontaine, he who could have any girl he wanted but wanting solely Lux.

1999 American film directed by Sofia Coppola

New Year's Eve, 1981, the Lower East Side. Monica's having a party, but as late as 9, no one's there. She stews (and drinks). Folks are on their way, all looking for love, sex, or both. En route, paths cross, gambits misfire: a performance artist, her boyfriend until today and his long-time pal Lucy, two Long Island high-school girls, two punk rockers, a bartender, a Scottish painter who's lousy in bed, a pretty face named Jack who runs when women say they love him, his cute but clumsy date Cindy, two trendy vamps, a loquacious cabby, the man-crazed Hillary, and Elvis Costello. Nearly everybody smokes, and nearly everybody scores. And all get who and what they deserve.

A pair of comic book authors named Holden McNeil and Banky Edwards, who live in New Jersey, have been best friends for 20 years. They spend their time working in their studio, and in the evenings they are going out. But their friendship is about to be disputed for the first time in their life, when a beautiful young lesbian woman named Alyssa Jones enters their life and Holden falls in love with her. Now Holden has to deal with Banky's jealousy, and with his new girlfriend's very rich past.

Jordan White and Amy Blue, two troubled teens, pick up an adolescent drifter, Xavier Red. Together, the threesome embark on a sex-and-violence-filled journey through an America of psychos and quickie marts.

The story of how a boy was abandoned by his mother and how he, later, abandoned her. The year he'll be 14, the parents of Augusten Burroughs (1965- ) divorce, and his mother, who thinks of herself as a fine poet on the verge of fame, delivers him to the eccentric household of her psychiatrist, Dr. Finch. During that year, Augusten avoids school, keeps a journal, and practices cosmetology. His mother's mental illness worsens, he takes an older lover, he finds friendship with Finch's younger daughter, and he's the occasional recipient of gifts from an unlikely benefactor. Can he survive to come of age?

Camden College. Sean Bateman is the younger brother of depraved Wall Street broker Patrick Bateman. He's also a drug dealer who owes a lot of money to "fellow" dealer Rupert Guest, as well as a well-known womanizer, for he sleeps with nearly half of the female population on campus. Lauren Hynde is, technically, a virgin. She's saving herself for her shallow boyfriend, Victor Johnson, who's left the States to backpack across Europe. Her slutty roommate, Lara, has the hots for Victor as well. Paul Denton, who used to date Lauren, is openly bisexual and attracted to Mitchell Allen, who's dating Candice to prove to Paul that he's not gay. Sean loves Lauren. Paul loves Sean. And Lauren may love Sean.

On the day that Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans, elderly Daisy Williams (nee Fuller) is on her deathbed in a New Orleans hospital. At her side is her adult daughter, Caroline. Daisy asks Caroline to read to her aloud the diary of Daisy's lifelong friend, Benjamin Button. Benjamin's diary recounts his entire extraordinary life, the primary unusual aspect of which was his aging backwards, being diagnosed with several aging diseases at birth and thus given little chance of survival, but who does survive and gets younger with time. Abandoned by his biological father, Thomas Button, after Benjamin's biological mother died in childbirth, Benjamin was raised by Queenie, a black woman and caregiver at a seniors home. Daisy's grandmother was a resident at that home, which is where she first met Benjamin. Although separated through the years, Daisy and Benjamin remain in contact throughout their lives, reconnecting in their forties when in age they finally match up. Some of the revelations in Benjamin's diary are difficult for Caroline to read, especially as it relates to the time past this reconnection between Benjamin and Daisy, when Daisy gets older and Benjamin grows younger into his childhood years.

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI is a darkly comic drama from Academy Award nominee Martin McDonagh (In Bruges). After months have passed without a culprit in her daughter's murder case, Mildred Hayes (Academy Award winner Frances McDormand) makes a bold move, painting three signs leading into her town with a controversial message directed at William Willoughby (Academy Award nominee Woody Harrelson), the town's revered chief of police. When his second-in-command Officer Dixon (Academy Award winner Sam Rockwell), an immature mother's boy with a penchant for violence, gets involved, the battle between Mildred and Ebbing's law enforcement is only exacerbated.

Theodore is a lonely man in the final stages of his divorce. When he's not working as a letter writer, his down time is spent playing video games and occasionally hanging out with friends. He decides to purchase the new OS1, which is advertised as the world's first artificially intelligent operating system, "It's not just an operating system, it's a consciousness," the ad states. Theodore quickly finds himself drawn in with Samantha, the voice behind his OS1. As they start spending time together they grow closer and closer and eventually find themselves in love. Having fallen in love with his OS, Theodore finds himself dealing with feelings of both great joy and doubt. As an OS, Samantha has powerful intelligence that she uses to help Theodore in ways others hadn't, but how does she help him deal with his inner conflict of being in love with an OS?

24 hours in L.A.; it's raining cats and dogs. Two parallel and intercut stories dramatize men about to die: both are estranged from a grown child, both want to make contact, and neither child wants anything to do with dad. Earl Partridge's son is a charismatic misogynist; Jimmy Gator's daughter is a cokehead and waif. A mild and caring nurse intercedes for Earl, reaching the son; a prayerful and upright beat cop meets the daughter, is attracted to her, and leads her toward a new calm. Meanwhile, guilt consumes Earl's young wife, while two whiz kids, one grown and a loser and the other young and pressured, face their situations. The weather, too, is quirky.

English singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist

Canadian producer, screenwriter and director

The body of a young girl (Laura Palmer) is washed up on a beach near the small Washington state town of Twin Peaks. FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper is called in to investigate her strange demise only to uncover a web of mystery that ultimately leads him deep into the heart of the surrounding woodland and his very own soul.

American drama television series from 1990–1991

Two FBI agents, fighting the departmental stigma of backroom boys - those who try to complicate the status quo of simple Means, Motive, Opportunity (MMO) of crime-solving with academics - work to develop an innovative investigative field incorporating psychology, anthropology and sociology as a method to reveal the motive. They acknowledge classic crime-solving - MMO - as no longer sufficient because criminality is becoming more complicated as Motive graduates from need and greed to inexplicable and irrational reasons. They theorize applying deeper psychological evaluation will posit new questions. Simply, asking Why will lead to the Who. This series focuses on the development by two men, two agents, of a new criminal field and does so through story lines of visiting the sociopathic mind.

In 2012, Louisiana State Police Detectives Rust Cohle and Martin Hart are brought in to revisit a homicide case they worked in 1995. As the inquiry unfolds in present day through separate interrogations, the two former detectives narrate the story of their investigation, reopening unhealed wounds, and drawing into question their supposed solving of a bizarre ritualistic murder in 1995. The timelines braid and converge in 2012 as each man is pulled back into a world they believed they'd left behind. In learning about each other and their killer, it becomes clear that darkness lives on both sides of the law.

Explores the early relationship between renowned psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter and a young FBI criminal profiler who is haunted by his ability to empathize with serial killers.

This series follows the eventful lives of some high-school kids in Tree Hill, a small but not too quiet town in North Carolina, where the greatest source of pride is the high school basketball team, the Ravens, since living memory coached by old Whitey Durham. Its greatest talent ever was Dan Scott, who now runs a successful car dealership. The present talents are his two sons, Nathan Scott, a beautiful and popular athlete, the absolute star, who was molded and stifled by his proud dad, ambitious Dan Scott, who pushes him harder then even the coach approves of, but rather neglected by his spoiled, impulsive mother Deb, an alcoholic, and Lucas, abandoned at birth with his devoted mother, hard-working café-owner Karen Roe, who grew up with Dan's older but poor brother Keith as substitute father as a social reject, only playing hoops on a public yard in the park with street-kids, his passion being reading; when an incident forces the coach to replace suspended players, Lucas soon proves the revelation, and after a while gets accepted and develops a dynamic, in the long run good relationship with his brother, who turns on his dad. Of course the teenage boys have friends, and especially a confusing series of usually short-loved 'eternal' love affairs with musical talents Peyton and Haley, also a tutor, and irresistible man-eater Brooke...

The professional and personal lives of those who work in advertising on Madison Avenue - self-coined "mad men" - in the 1960s are presented. The stories focus on those at one of the avenue's smaller firms, Sterling Cooper, and its various incarnations over the decade. At the heart of these stories is Donald Draper, the creative genius of the company. That professional creative brilliance belies the fact of a troubled childhood, one that he would rather forget and not let anyone know about except for a select few, but one that shaped who he is as an adult and as an ad man in the need not only to sell products but sell himself to the outside world. His outward confidence also masks many insecurities as evidenced through his many vices, such as excessive smoking, drinking and womanizing - the latter despite being a family man - and how he deals with the aftermath of some of the negative aspects of his life.

A 15-year-old girl and her trials and tribulations of being a teenager and dealing with friends, guys, parents, and school.

Trailer Park Boys is about life between prison terms. Always trying to play the angles, always done-in by forces beyond their control, and always in the middle of a gunfight, Ricky and Julian are decent, hard- working guys trying to cope with the New World Economic Order. It's not that the boys don't know right from wrong, it's just that "right" rarely presents itself.

Kenny Powers was poised to rule the Big Leagues, but two things got in the way: his fading fastball and his insufferable personality. After a spectacular career flame-out, Kenny goes home to Shelby County, NC, to nurse his wounds and work as a gym teacher at his old middle school.

I'm the author of the post-Empire novels lovetrust, Leeds House, Famous For Nothing, and Empire Waste

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