Category Archives: Books

THE ITCH by Steven Hammer

The first porno book to touch my hands was THE ITCH by Steven Hammer. I must have read the Olympia Press paperback 3000 times between the 1965 and 1969. The author’s blue tales of trisexual liasions between aristocrats warped my tender libido and I rejected virginity as a value. Here’s a passage from that great […]

A HERO OF OUR TIME by Mikhail Lermontov

Written 2016 Mikhail Lermontov wrote A HERO OF OUR TIME in 1839. The short novel romanticized the life on the frontier of the Caucasian kingdoms. Lermontov was a troubled soul and spent two exiles with the Army of the Don fighting the rebel mountaineers. Lermontov painted and drew scenes from his service. A world lost […]

100 GREATEST AFRICAN AMERICANS

In 2002 Temple University professor Molefi Kete Asante amassed list for his biographical dictionary 100 GREATEST AFRICAN AMERICANS. The illustrious names were listed alphabetically with # 1 being Hank Aaron and Malcolm X closed out the hundred. I recognized forty-one of them. Historical giants and thank to Wikipedia I read how the remaining fifty-nine African […]

Jane Birkin on Proust

My mother was right. When you’ve got nothing left, all you can do is get into silk underwear and start reading Proust. – Jane Birkin Personally I wasn’t able to read past the opening line of A LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU. “For a long time I used to go to bed early.” I never […]

CLOCHEMERLE by Gabriel Chevallier

In 1994 I was stranded in Penang, Malaysia. I had gone to the Malacca Straits city to rendezvous with Sam Royalle to film my trip down to Singapore and off the Sumatra, however my friend was stuck in London. “Sorry, mate, no money.” “No worries.” Indeed, I was stranded in Asia. My sick travel companion […]