The Jell-O Rule
The eulogy for novelist Charles Portis, delivered at Portis’ funeral by his friend and colleague Ernie Dumas.
Now I Don’t Know Who I Am
“Mixed (race) feelings about Columbia’s Toro y Moi.”
Like a Shovel and a Rope
“We had nothing to lose,” Cary Ann said. “Fuck it. Band. Family. Let’s give it a shot. . . . Handshake, spit on it. If it gets too nasty we’ll cut and run.”
Eartha Kitt, Coming Home
The many lives of an icon.
Sing Across the Ocean
“Ranky Tanky is an ancestral funk band. Their members are variously jazz and gospel trained, but as a collective, ancestral funk is their genre. I know because they start Ranky Tanky, their first album, with horns on the three and four, but Good Time, their second one, released in July, with bass on the one.”
The Great American Press Release
America has many ways of reminding Black people that the Constitution and American Dream were not created for them.
Everything He Wrote Was Good
Talented, troubled ─ unlike Willie Morris and Marshall Frady’s legacies, the life and work of Southern writer Johnny Greene has largely been forgotten, until another writer tried to piece it together. It wasn’t easy. It still isn’t entirely clear.
Letter Imperfect
One woman faces the ghosts of her sorority past.
Beyond the Levee
The land called Big Island, Mississippi, is populated by tall tales about a murderous, moonshining frontiersman name Perry Martin, but the stories and thick woods that still cover this land preserve its old world magic. That’s what keeps one camper coming back.
