Essays Archives - Page 5 of 12 - Sensitive Skin Magazine

Catastrophes

Breyten Breytenback

No, the universe remains dark. We are animals overcome by catastrophes . . . but I suddenly discovered that alienation, the exploitation of man by man, and malnourishment, will push into the background the metaphysical evil,...

Maria Yudina

Jenny Wade

The Russian concert pianist Maria Veniaminovna Yudina, little known in the West, died this day, November 19, in 1970. She had a fervent cult following in the Soviet Union, partly because of her resistance to the establishme...

Beer Mystic Burp #20: Eddie Woods Has Been Around the Block – With & Without Tennessee

bart plantenga

“If Tennessee Williams doesn’t know what to do with his life, why should I worry?” ~ Eddie Woods, Tennessee Williams in Bangkok Eddie Woods and I go back to October 1978. It was in Amsterdam at the Ins & Out...

Saving Johannes

Eddie Woods

Johannes van Dam (1946-2013). Journalist, walking encyclopedia, and culinary writer extraordinaire. And one of my dearest Amsterdam friends since we first met in 1980, which was still early Ins & Outs Press days. Johannes, w...

We Are All Alice B. Toklas

James Reich

Toklasization, being the condition of failing to materialize in one’s autobiography, or of being ghostwritten out by a biographer with more vanity than ours, has become the most significant cause of suicide and psychopatho...

Beer Mystic Burp #20: Ron Kolm: No Longer Chugging Rank Cologne

bart plantenga

Ron Kolm: No Longer Chugging Rank Cologne One of the perils of the fast life is that if you’re not synchronized with the prevailing velocity you lose focus, things get blurry, imprecise, or you end up getting dragged a...

In Memory of Dmitri Shostakovich

Jenny Wade

Today is the anniversary of the death of the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich (Sept 29, 1906 - April 9, 1975). Shostakovich struggled under a hostile and perilous political environment for his entire working life. Af...

Alexander Blok – The Stranger

Jenny Wade

Alexander Blok, the supreme poet of the Russian Symbolist movement, died this day in the year 1921 in St. Petersburg, at the age of 40. Blok broke from the tradition of Russian realism with its emphasis on social respo...

Zoning, by Spencer Kansa – review by Marc Olmsted

Marc Olmsted

Zoning, by Spencer Kansa, Beatdom Books, 2011 - $12.00 - paper Spencer Kansa’s debut novella Zoning is terrifying, page-turning fun. If this seems contradictory, consider that he was an acolyte of William Burroughs, so...

TAYLOR MEAD IS DEAD. A PISS-POOR OBITUARY IF EVER THERE WAS ONE.

Norman Douglas

In light of the fact that the guys doing my old job at The New York Times dropped the ball on this one, I suppose I must accept that I wouldn't have gotten much more out of any obit they published than this: Ten years ago...