Fifty years ago today, Ken Kesey, not yet thirty and already the author of two acclaimed novels, invited the members of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang to a party at his home in the coastal mountains south of San Francisco. When the Angels arrived it was just past 3 p.m. A blue summer afternoon: Kesey and his Merry Pranksters—the friends who’d accompanied him, the year before, on the cross-country bus trip that would later become the subject Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test—watched … [Read more...] about Things American: Ken Kesey, Hunter S. Thompson and the Hell’s Angels at La Honda: August 7th, 1965
THINGS AMERICAN
Things American: Writers Remember James Salter
American novelist, story writer, and screenwriter James Salter died on June 19th, leaving behind a body of work that presents a vision of a century in dramatic motion. He was a writer of the quotidian and a craftsman of the first water whose interest in sensory experiences is most evident in his arresting narrative passages. Food, drink, sex, the seemingly impossible beauty of things touched, witnessed, and heard—these are rendered in precise and yet often surprising terms in Salter's work. In … [Read more...] about Things American: Writers Remember James Salter
Things American: Baltimore Authors Respond to the Death of Freddie Gray
Baltimore’s bus benches are simple, utilitarian things: just two molded concrete end-pieces and seven wooden planks that you wouldn’t think much of were it not for the slogan embossed on the slats of the backrest: “Baltimore: The Greatest City in America.” It’s an odd sentiment, not because there isn’t a lot to love about Baltimore, but because it seems less a statement of greatness than it does a statement of defiance. As with so many other American cities, Baltimore has famously and … [Read more...] about Things American: Baltimore Authors Respond to the Death of Freddie Gray
Things American: Control Magic
“The mind: a great weapon and an even greater weakness.” – Jace Beleren I. “Illusions of Grandeur” It’s 7 A.M. on a Saturday in October 2012. I'm twenty-eight-years-old and yelling “Idiot,” “Fucking terrible,” and “What were you thinking?” into my steering wheel. I’m driving home from Time Warp Comics, where I’ve just lost a Magic tournament. And not just lost, but lost lost: eighteenth out of twenty-five at the midnight release for the newest set, Return to Ravnica. My opponents? Mostly … [Read more...] about Things American: Control Magic
Things American: The Boys Of My Youth (Baseball Seasons 1989-2014)
“Baseball breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in spring when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings. And then as soon as the chill rains come it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone, when you need it most.” —A. Bartlett Giamatti, Commissioner of Major League Baseball, 1989 My father teaches me two essential skills at the tender age of eighteen months: to read and to blow raspberries with my … [Read more...] about Things American: The Boys Of My Youth (Baseball Seasons 1989-2014)
Things American: Nic Pizzolatto’s Women Before True Detective
In honor of all of the breathless praise accompanying the release of HBO’s new crime noir series True Detective, The Atlantic is urging readers to revisit two short stories by Nicolas Pizzolatto, the show’s creator. The stories appeared in the magazine ten years ago, when Pizzolatto was an MFA student at the University of Arkansas, and they explore themes that would later mark the HBO series. Chief among those is gender and the relationship between men and women. Pizzolatto is a radically … [Read more...] about Things American: Nic Pizzolatto’s Women Before True Detective