John Baker’s Blog

Ash Tree might be coming to an end:

When John Coltrane stopped doing dope—I think around 1960—his playing started getting far more piercing and soul searching. He wasn’t medicating the pain away, instead he used music to medicate it. Blogging is heroin. A quick fix of writing and response. All the energy I expend here should probably be put into my novel.

Some people stop blogging and you think, OK, that’s not a great loss. But I’m going to miss Ash Tree.

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The Strange Sisters site has a collection of fifties/sixties lesbian paperback fiction cover art. Stereotypes and clichés abound. This is just a sample. Thanks to The Spectacularly Obtuse Blog.

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“The Times They Are A-Changin’ is so bad that it makes you forget how good the songs are.”

In a new Broadway show, Bob Dylan’s songs are used to tell the story of a young man’s relationships with his demanding father and a beautiful circus performer.

The musical has been described as “plodding”, and a “literal-minded fable that’s vibrant and busy, but also chaotic and narratively incoherent”.

Dylan, apparently, approached the choreographer, Twyla Tharp, three years ago, wondering if she could do something with his material.

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Listen to the voices of many of the best writers of the English language. These uncut, behind-the-scenes interviews were the foundation of Don Swaim’s long-running CBS Radio show, Book Beat.

Wired for Books is proud to make these important recordings publicly available in their entirety for the first time. Thanks to Books, Words and Writing for this link.

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