Mastodon Sensitive Skin Magazine - Page 12 of 65 - art, stories, poetry, essays, reviews and music

There’s Never Been A Better Time To Die

Bernard Meisler

Sensitive Skin Books is proud to present THERE'S NEVER BEEN A BETTER TIME TO DIE, a noir/mystery/crime novel/comedy/satire of late-stage capitalism, as seen through the eyes of a real estate agent in Marin County, who accidentally becomes a hard-boiled detective. The novel takes place in Marin County, CA, 2008, just before the bubble burst. Once the home to the Grateful Dead, Gary Snyder and Sam Shepard, the newer demographic tends toward hedge fund managers, dotcom millionaires and trophy wives, where people, without any sense of irony, paste "Keep Tahoe Blue" bumper stickers on their gigantic SUVs. Despite widespread affluence, conspicuous consumption and a massive sense of entitlement, there is an undercurrent of fear among the residents—of a downturn causing them to lose it all, their kids drinking or taking drugs (or murdering an Italian policeman while on vacation in Europe), of falling behind their neighbors, of getting foun...
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The Last Poet of the Village

Sergei Yesenin

Sensitive Skin is proud to present The Last Poet of the Village, a bilingual (Russian/English) edition of selected poems by the perhaps the greatest 20th-century Russian poet, Sergei Yesenin, translated by acclaimed Russian-American poet Anton Yakovlev, with prefaces by Yakovlev and Donald Zirilli. Sergei Yesenin (1895-1925), whose distinctive lyricism and lush rural imagery have indelibly imprinted themselves into the Russian consciousness, is second in popularity among Russian speakers only to Alexander Pushkin. Sadly, Yesenin has received surprisingly little attention abroad, where he is best known for his brief marriage to Isadora Duncan. This bilingual edition (original Russian side-by-side with translation by Anton Yakovlev) is an attempt to rectify the relative scarcity of Yesenin’s English translations and to introduce English speakers to many of his most beloved and iconic poems. Four sample poems from the book are now ...
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Sensitive Skin Selected Writing 2016-2018

The Editors

Sensitive Skin Books is proud to present our first writing anthology, Sensitive Skin Selected Writing: 2016-2018, Our (once print, now online only) magazine has been described as "The New Yorker on acid," and "almost underground." For almost 30 years, it has featured writing, art and music by artists famous, infamous, unknown and breaking, everybody from William S. Burroughs to Richard Hell to John Lurie to Alex Katz to Eileen Myles to Gary Indiana. For many (mostly obvious reasons), our final print issue was released in early 2016. But we thought it would be a valuable resource to collect some of our favorite writing from 2016 to 2018, because print, though more and more difficult to justify producing, is still - well, great. This 306-page anthology, edited by Bernard Meisler, collects selected stories, poems and essays, published online between 2016 and 2018, so you can finally enjoy them in physical book (and Kindle - we ma...
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Kerouac: The Last Quarter Century by Gerald Nicosia – Review

Jim Feast

Kerouac: The Last Quarter Century Gerald Nicosia Corte Madera, CA: Noodlebrain Press, 2019 Gerald Nicosia's Kerouac: The Last Quarter Century is an absorbing and crucial book, laying out repeatedly how commerce triumphed over art and any real literary values in Kerouac's story. That story culminates with the scandal of auctioning off the roll manuscript of On the Road to a sports franchise owner, who obviously could not care less about the literary qualities of the text and knows it only as the work of a cult author, which may appreciate in value. It is also the story of the inheritance battle scandal which arises around will-tampering and high-priced lawyers. Putting aside that Kerouac died nearly penniless and now others are making millions off his legacy, the real crime is the fact that the values he espoused in On the Road and other texts, the importance of spirituality, comradeship, adventuring and giving zero atten...
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