Giant Slide

As I was finishing my second book — a media archaeology, literary study, and cultural history of the sui generis comedy group the Firesign Theatre — my editor suggested that I start a newsletter to provide updates on the book and communicate with readers, actual and potential.

A big part of my research for Firesign entailed reading lots of public intellectual writing from the 1960s and 70s. I already had a huge respect for (and also deeply enjoyed) writers like Ellen Willis, Greg Tate, Susan Sontag, Greil Marcus, Robert Christgau, Lester Bangs, Pauline Kael, Nelson George... I have even more respect now.

One of the great tragedies of the last couple of decades has been the collapse of the alternative weeklies. I lived in NYC when the Voice and also the New York Free Press were publishing exciting writing everyone read. There were some great writers in Philly, when I moved there, too. And when my wife took a job in Portland, the Portland Mercury was an absolute must-read, satirically negating the affirmative laidback (and not intellectual enough) culture later satirized in Portlandia. Ann Romano, Frank Cassano, I Anonymous.

I came to Substack because this kind of writing is migrating here, including many of those writers, and I wanted to try my hand at writing on spec. Drop me a line if you’re interested in what you’re seeing or if there’s anything you’d like me to take on.

Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and publication archives.

.