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The Absence of Angels – an excerpt

Christian X. Hunter

THE ABSENCE OF ANGELS, a novel/memoir by Christian X. Hunter, about his growing up in NYC, from the time of the Fillmore East to the AIDS era, was published by Sensitive Skin Books in April, 2023. You can find it on Amazon, or order it from your local trusted bookseller. Here's a brief excerpt: I've always loved Manhattan in the hot weather. As a small kid I was sent away to stupid summer camps in the country. I hated them. While being forced to learn the breast stroke in ice-cold water in some mountain lake, I'd be wishing I was at the heavily chlorinated Twenty-third Street pool near the East River, surrounded by thousands of New Yorkers playing and shouting in dozens of languages. While sitting around the campfire with my eyes tearing from smoke and burning my mouth trying to suck some shitty marshmallow off a pointed stick, I'd be thinking about how I'd rather be on Manhattan Avenue hanging out on the hood of a car, downing a sl...
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Between Good Men & No Man at All – poetry by Pam Ward – Review

Marc Olmsted

Between Good Men & No Man at All By Pam Ward World Stage Press $20.00 Poet Richard Modiano first brought Pam Ward to my attention by telling me she was writing the introduction to his poetic collection, The Forbidden Lunchbox. I didn’t know her work, so he read her to me over the phone. I was instantly hooked by her images, candor and the gallows humor known only to those the System does not favor. Still, as an old white man and apparently retro Post-Beat poet, I would not have had the temerity to review her new work Between Good Men & No Man at All, but I was asked, so here we are. I already knew we weren’t going to get homogenized Hamilton rap or highbrow slam’s rhyming editorial language (i.e. non-imagistic). Instead I was surprised to be reminded of stumbling into an L.A. skid row grind house for the last half of Sweet Sweetback’s Bad Ass Song. Plus, like all grind house double- and triple-bills, t...
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The Absence of Angels

Christian X. Hunter

Sensitive Skin Books is proud to present THE ABSENCE OF ANGELS, Christian X. Hunter's three-decade tramp through the evolution of ‘60s East Village counter culture in a kaleidoscope of freaks, to the '70s and playing with bar bands and living in Vermont communes, to the '80s with Warhol Superstars, with encounters all along the way with Times Square grifters, junkie poets, rock stars, revolutionaries, in the back rooms of the Fillmore East, Max's Kansas City and The Mudd Club. THE ABSENCE OF ANGELS is a synesthetic expedition through late 20th Century Manhattan. It’s a love story between a city and its denizens. Every page is permeated with poetic frenzy, grace and verve. Hunter captures the magical decay of the 70s and 80s like few other writers have. I LOVE THIS BOOK! —Gillian McCain, co-author of Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Christian X. Hunter lets us ride shotgun to his life in the turbulent 1...
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