This collection of mordant, poignant and playful essays shows Rebecca Brown at the height of her imaginative and intuitive powers. A wry and incisive social and literary critique is couched in a gonzo mix of pop culture, autobiography, fiction, literary history, misremembered movie plots and fantasy that plays with the notion of what it is to be “American.”

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Rebecca Brown, Kevin Killian, Dodie Bellamy, and Robert Gluck celebrate the release of Life As We Show It: Writing On Film, edited by Brian Pera and Masha Tupitsyn and published by City Lights.

Life As We Show It is a dynamic cross-genre collection that uses short stories, essays, and poetry to explore the cinematic experience. In these innovative writings, the movie-viewer relationship is positioned as protagonist, theme and plot, and most importantly, as a new genre in its own right.

The first full biography of Thelonious Monk, written by noted historian, Robin  Kelley, with full access to the family’s archives and with dozens of interviews. Kelley has been working for years with Monk Institute founder Thelonious Monk Jr., who has granted Kelley access to rare historical documents for his biography. No other scholar has ever had such access and support from the Monk family. This promisses to become a classic reading of Monk to be referenced for years to come.

Robin D.G. Kelley is a professor of history and American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California. From 2003-2006, he was the William B. Ransford Professor of Cultural and Historical Studies at Columbia Univeristy. From 1994-2003, he was a professor of history and Africana Studies at New York University as well the chairman of NYU’s history department from 2002-2003. One of the youngest tenured professors in a full academic discipline–at the age of 32–Kelley has spent most of his career exploring American and African-American history with a particular emphasis on African-American musical culture, including jazz and hip-hop. Kelley is also working on two other books: Speaking in Tongues: Jazz and Modern Africa and A World to Gain: A History of African Americans.

This podcast was recorded at City Lights Bookstore on October 29, 2009.

Was Huey Newton a gifted leader of his people or a dangerous outlaw? Were the Black Panthers heroes or terrorists? Whether Newton and the Panthers are remembered in a positive or a negative light, no one questions Newton’s status as one of America’s most important revolutionaries. Long an iconic figure for radicals, Huey Newton is now being discovered by those interested in the history of America’s social movements. This new release of a classic collection of his writings and speeches traces the development of Newton’s personal and political thinking, as well as the radical changes that took place in the formative years of the Black Panther Party.

With a rare and persuasive honesty, To Die for the People records the Party’s internal struggles, rivalries and contradictions, and the result is a fascinating look back at a young revolutionary group determined to find ways to deal with the injustice it saw in American society. And, as a new foreword by Elaine Brown makes eminently clear, Newton’s prescience and foresight make these documents strikingly pertinent today.

David Hilliard is a founding member and Chief of Staff of the Black Panther Party, was involved in every major activity of the best recognized African American organization of the 1960s and 70s. Hillard, a vibrant voice on our recent history, speaks eloquently to the racial divisions in America today. Hilliard is author of the book, This Side of Glory.

This podcast was recorded January 14, 2010 at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco

Elaine Elinson

Wherever There’s a Fight captures the sweeping story of how freedom and equality have grown in California, from the gold rush right up to the precarious post-9/11 era. The book tells the stories of the brave individuals who have stood up for their rights in the face of social hostility, physical violence, economic hardship, and political stonewalling.

Impossible Princess is the third collection of gay short fiction by Kevin Killian. An original member of the notorious San Francisco-based “new narrative” circle including Dennis Cooper and Kathy Acker, Killian is a master short story writer, crafting campy yet edgy tales that explore both the humor and darkness of desire. From an examination of an ex-British-boy-band-member’s skeevy skivvies, to a sexual assault inside a copy machine, to a nocturnal tryst in a panther cage, Impossible Princess runs a bizarre gamut of erotic experience, where the appetite of lust is only satisfied by the peculiar unexpected.

A founder and former director of Small Press Traffic, Kevin Killian has long been a hidden favorite of gay literary San Francisco. Killian has published numerous books, including two previous story collections, the Pen award-winning Little Men (1996) and I Cry Like a Baby (2001). His latest novel, Spreadeagle (2010), is published by Alyson Books. With his wife Dodie Bellamy, he edits the long-running poetry zine, Mirage/Periodical. His work has been widely anthologized and has appeared in, among others, Best American Poetry 1988 (ed. John Ashbery), and Discontents (ed. Dennis Cooper).

Recorded Thursday, December 3 at City Lights Books in San Francisco

The Tyranny of Email draws on extensively on the research of linguistics, behavioral sciences, cultural critics, and philosophers to take a fascinating look at the unrelenting nature of correspondence through the ages, and explores how that nature has manifested itself in email.  As the toll of email mounts, reducing our time for leisure and contemplation, and separating us from each other in an unending and lonely battle with the overfull inbox. Freeman enters a plea for communication that is more selective and nuanced, and, above all, more sociable.

John Freeman is an award-winning writer and book critic who’s written for a variety of publications including The New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, People, and The Wall Street Journal. Freeman won the 2007 James Patterson page-turner award, and was recently named American editor of Granta. He lives in New York City.

Recorded Wednesday, October 28, 2009.

In this episode, poet Sesshu Foster reads from his eclectic World Ball Notebook, recorded at City Lights on April 29, 2009.

The first team sport in human history was played with a ball made of stone, on courts that have been found from the Mayan ruins of Central America to Arizona. Thus we find a soccer dad walking the sidelines of a scuffed LA field, its goal lines swirling, nets strung loosely between daylight and the spirit world — Foster’s inimitably fierce and powerfully evocative mix of the fantastic and the mundane.

For more, visit Sesshu Foster’s blog, East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines.

Yippie co-founder. merry prankster and satirical provocateur Paul Krassner reads from Who’s to Say What’s Obscene?: Politics, Culture and Comedy in America Today, published by City Lights Books, July 15, 2009.

Fans of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Onion will appreciate this timely collection of satirical essays by counterculture icon Paul Krassner. With irreverence and an often X-rated wit, Krassner explores contemporary comedy, and obscenity in politics and culture from “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banners to scenes cut out of recent movies, including Borat.

In his essay “Don Imus Meets Michael Richards” Krassner examines racism in comedy from Lenny Bruce to Dave Chapelle, on The Sarah Silverman Show and Curb Your Enthusiasm, and in controversial comic strips like The Boondocks.

“These are times of repression,” says Krassner, “and the more repression there is, the more need there is for irreverence toward those in authority.”

Praise for Paul Krassner:

“He is an expert at ferreting out hypocrisy and absurdism from the more solemn crannies of American culture.” — New York Times

“To classify Krassner as a social rebel is far too cute. He’s a nut, a raving, unconfined nut.” — Federal Bureau of Investigation

“The FBI was right. This man is dangerous—and funny; and necessary.” — George Carlin

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This podcast was made possible by the generous folks at the Pacifica Radio Archives.

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994), one of the most outrageous and controversial figures of 20th-century American literature, was so prolific that many important pieces were never collected during his lifetime. Portions is a substantial selection of these wide-ranging works, most of which have been unavailable since their original appearance in underground newspapers, literary journals, even porno mags. Among the highlights are his first published short story, “Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip”; his last short story, “The Other”; his first and last essays; and the first installment of his famous “Notes of a Dirty Old Man” column. The book contains meditations on his familiar themes (drinking, horse-racing, etc.) as well as singular discussions of such figures as Artaud, Pound, and the Rolling Stones. Other significant works include the experimental title piece; a fictionalized account of meeting his hero, John Fante (“I Meet the Master”); an unflinching review of Hemingway (“An Old Drunk Who Ran Out of Luck”); the intense, autobiographical “Dirty Old Man Confesses”; and several discussions of his aesthetics (“A Rambling Essay on Poetics and the Bleeding Life Written While Drinking a Six-Pack (Tall),” “In Defense of a Certain Type of Poetry, a Certain Type of Life, a Certain Type of Blood-Filled Creature Who Will Someday Die,” and “Upon the Mathematics of the Breath and the Way”, revealing an unexpectedly learned mind behind his seemingly offhand productions.