Friday, May 24, 2013
2011-05-09 13:48:31
by JOHN MARKS Last June, at the beginning of the summer movie season--around the time that Ridley Scott's Robin Hood bombed in theatres--I had a chance to talk with one of the greatest film critics currently writing in the English language, David Thomson, author of The New Biographical Dictionary Of Film and many other books...More
2010-10-24 15:27:36
by JOHN MARKS Last summer, I had one of the peak movie-going experiences of my life. Outdoors, against the backdrop of Monument Valley, courtesy of the Navaho tribe, I watched a screening of John Ford's The Searchers, one of the two or three greatest westerns of all time...More
2010-10-04 07:55:58
by JOHN MARKS The Midterm elections are now one month away, and the general outcome seems clear enough. Democrats expect to lose big. Republicans believe they will take the House and maybe, in the event of a political miracle, the Senate...More
2010-09-27 08:47:07
THE PURPLE INTERVIEW: Buddy Miller Talks Led Zeppelin, Gospel And Triple Bypass Heart Surgery
by JOHN MARKS It's been more than forty years since Led Zeppelin first burned down the rock world with its indelible electrified blues songs: "Communication Breakdown", "Whole Lotta Love", "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You"...More
2010-09-13 18:50:37
by JOHN MARKS It must have been a heart-rending moment for Sarah Shourd, 32, an American woman who has been accused of espionage and held captive for 14 months by the Iranian government...More
2010-06-14 17:59:16
THE PURPLE INTERVIEW: Edward Serotta Talks Helen Thomas, Israel And The Jews Of Central Europe
by JOHN MARKS Last week, when 89-year-old Helen Thomas of Hearst told the world via YouTube that the Israelis should leave "Palestine" and go back to Germany and Poland--back to the heart of the continent, in other words, where most Jews were annihilated in the 1940's--she touched on a seldom-mentioned truth...More
2010-05-24 08:19:03
by JOHN MARKS Ask most people to name someone who works in the Senate, and they'll probably name a Senator. Ask that same person how many people work in the Senate, and he or she might come up with the obvious number: one hundred...More
2010-05-17 14:16:06
THE PURPLE INTERVIEW: Stephen Kiernan Talks Authentic Patriotism, What It Is And How To Get Some
by JOHN MARKS Dr. Harold Freeman saw the problem clearly enough. The women of Harlem had abnormally high rates of breast cancer. The solution baffled him, but at some level that he didn't quite appreciate, the answer lay right in front of him...More
2010-05-12 10:41:18
PETER BLACKSTOCK: Josh Ritter, Carolina Theater, Durham, North Carolina, May 11, 2010
by PETER BLACKSTOCK "Babe we both had / Dry spells, hard times and bad lands / I'm a good man for ya / I'm a good man." That's the chorus of "Good Man," a track from Josh Ritter's 2006 album The Animal Years, and it has become a sort of signature tune for this New-York-by-way-of-Idaho singer-songwriter...More
2010-05-10 07:24:30
by JOHN MARKS Even the memory of the execution has vanished with the years, and that's astonishing, given the subject matter--race and sex in Mississippi in the era before Civil Rights...More
2010-05-03 14:44:29
THE PURPLE INTERVIEW: Author David Shields Talks Doubt, Belief And HBO'S The Wire
by JOHN MARKS Last week, in the Purple Interview, we spoke with author David Shields about his new book Reality Hunger: A Manifesto. In the book, published by Knopf, Shields argues passionately and personally for a new kind of narrative art, a form of writing that breaks down barriers between reported fact and fiction, that favors immediacy over narrative architecture, raw feeling over refinement, that dares to borrow liberally from other sources, to "appropriate", the author's preferred term for what others have called plagiarism...More
2010-04-26 12:35:02
by JOHN MARKS Plagiarism is cool. All art is theft. There's not much difference between fact and fiction. The traditional novel is dead. If you've heard these lines lately, chances are you've been listening to someone talk about author David Shields, whose new book Reality Hunger: A Manifesto has been making waves in the literary establishment...More
2010-04-20 15:09:13
THE PURPLE INTERVIEW: Veteran New York Times Reporter John Tagliabue Talks About The Polish Tragedy
by JOHN MARKS Poland is still in mourning. Yesterday, its people buried President Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria, the First Lady, in Wawel Castle, tomb of the kings of the nation...More
2010-04-12 16:17:34
by JOHN MARKS Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour made national news this weekend when he gave Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell an attaboy for leaving slavery out of his state's appreciation of Confederate history...More
2010-04-07 11:50:49
PETER BLACKSTOCK: A Few Thoughts On The Life, Death And Resurrection Of American Roots Music
What does the future hold for American roots music? In the following Purple Interview, No Depression co-founder and editor Peter Blackstock gives us his take...More
2010-04-05 11:59:46
Last week marked the 15th anniversary of the murder of pop star Selena Quintanilla Perez, and it may seem morbid to take note of it, but we have our very good reasons...More
2010-03-29 07:01:25
THE PURPLE INTERVIEW: Author Daniel Menaker Talks The Fine Art of Good Conversation
by JOHN MARKS This week, all over the world, Jews, Christians and their friends gather in celebration. Prayers will be said, Bibles and Haggadahs opened, and then, over Seder and Easter Sunday tables groaning with food and wine, the talk will begin...More
2010-03-22 10:56:26
by JOHN MARKS Did you shake your head at the anger unleashed on the floor of Congress during the healthcare vote yesterday? Do you ever wonder how we got here? If so, the following interview (which first ran last November) is a must...More
2010-03-15 10:35:14
by JOHN MARKS In the early hours of December 30, 2006, on the road to Tehran airport, a dark green Peugeot sedan pulled up beside Haleh Esfandiari's taxi...More
2010-03-08 15:55:19
THE PURPLE INTERVIEW: Novelist James Hynes Talks Aliens, Autobiography, God and Horror
Tomorrow is the publication day for the long-awaited new novel by James Hynes. The book is called Next, and it's ostensibly a story about a guy looking for a job and a woman on a hot day in Austin, Texas, but that's like saying that Loch Ness is a lake in Scotland...More
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