A 2019 Music Book of the Year, THE TIMES Out of print for several years, a comprehensive volume of Lou Reed's lyrics with brand new introductions, now updated in a new text design to include the lyrics from his final album with Metallica, Lulu. Through his many incarnations-from proto punk to glam rocker to elder statesman of the avant garde Lou Reed's work has maintained an undeniable vividness and raw beauty, fueled by precise character studies and rendered with an admirable shot of moral ambiguity. Beginning with his formative days in the Velvet Underground and continuing through his remarkable solo albums like Transformer, Berlin, and New York,Doin' The Things We Want To is crucial to an appreciation of Lou Reed, not only as a consummate underground musician, but as one of the truly significant visionary lyricists of the rock n' roll era. Containing a body of work that spans more than six decades, this is a monument to the literary qualities of an American original.

The Question-and-Answer interview was one of Andy Warhol's favorite communication vehicles, so much so that he named his own magazine after the form. Yet, never before has anyone published a collection of interviews that Warhol himself gave. I'll Be Your Mirror contains more then thirty conversations revealing this unique and important artist. Each piece presents a different facet of the Sphinx-like Warhol's ever-evolving personality. Writer Kenneth Goldsmith provides context and provenance for each selection. Beginning in 1962 with a notorious interview in which Warhol literally begs the interviewer to put words into his mouth, the book covers Warhol's most important artistic period during the '60s. As Warhol shifts to filmmaking in the '70s, this collection explores his emergence as socialite, scene-maker, and trendsetter; his influential Interview magazine; and the Studio 54 scene. In the 80s, his support of young artists like Jean-Michel Basquait, his perspective on art history and the growing relationship to technology in his work are shown. Finally, his return to religious imagery and spirituality are available in an interview conducted just months before his death. Including photographs and previous unpublished interviews, this collage of Warhol showcases the artist's ability to manipulate, captivate, and enrich American culture.

In his third book of essays, David Lazar blends personal meditations on sex and death with considerations of popular music and coping with anxiety through singing, bowling, and other distractions. He sets his work apart as both in the essay and of the essay by throwing himself into the form's past--interviewing or speaking to past masters and turning over rocks to find lost gems of the essay form. I'll Be Your Mirror further expands the dimensions of contemporary nonfiction writing by concluding with a series of aphorisms. Surreal, comical, and urban moments of being, they are part Cioran, part Kafka, and part Lenny Bruce. These are accompanied by Heather Frise's illustrations, whose looking-glass visions of motherhood--funny and grotesque--meet the vision of the aphorist in this most unusual nonfiction book.

Describes a model for understanding canine behavior based on the premise that dog and owner form a group mind and that when a dog behaves in a certain manner it is reacting to the emotions the owner is feeling.

(Disclaimer: This study was written and published before the terrible Chris Chan revelations of July 30, 2021.) A CRITICAL CONFRONTATION. What can we learn from comparing the two most unique cultural figures in living memory? Warhol and Chris Chan: Both became famous while producing artwork that was often met with derision. Both became the focus of intense interest and curiosity. Their indelible personalities provoked fascination, laughter, and--at times--horror. In spite of their strangeness--or because of it--they reflect particularly pertinent aspects of the world around them. They are thought of as the oddest of oddities, and yet they represent the course of our society as a whole. From bright Pop Art to sordid underground films, Andy Warhol portrayed an America that was both familiar and avant-garde. He carried a tape recorder everywhere and prophesized that in the future everyone would be famous just for being themselves. Several decades later, Chris Chan embodies Warhol's dream as it has turned nightmarish. Thanks to the internet Chris has become known worldwide, is constantly documented, observed, scrutinized, and made the subject of mass debate and media analysis. Warhol worked to legitimize popular culture and give it the prestige of high art. But more recent generations have grown up breathing pop culture as if it were air. "Young at heart", people continue playing video games and collecting toys into adulthood, and favorite entertainment franchises are treated akin to religions. More than anyone else, Chris Chan emblematizes the excesses of this era. This comprehensive study investigates the parallels and divergences between Warhol and Chris Chan, both of whom can be seen as bellwethers of cultural shifts. The two are compared in terms of how they relate to the following elements--from the fundamentals of life to the themes of our age: ● Names & Words ● Collecting & Hoarding ● Consumerism ● Technology & Media ● Women . . . Sex . Transgenderism . . Femdom ● Fame: Mythologies of Self & Multiverse ● Recording A wide spectrum of knowledge is painstakingly drawn upon to analyze our two subjects from all angles. References and points of comparison are made to elements of: ● Art history ● Classic film ● Modernist literature ● Philosophy (from Plato to the postmodern) ● Popular music ● Psychology (especially psychoanalysis) ● Internet meme culture Through pathos and ridiculousness, in an uncertain world that's constantly changing, we trace the human spirit as it passes from the golden age of Americana... through the high Warholian era... and now into social media squalor. (NOTES: 1. Chris Chan's pronouns are indeed respected throughout this study. 2. Though the author takes a critical and often negative view of Chris Chan, Chris Chan approved of the book after it was published. 3. Chris Chan is in no way financially connected to this project.)

With 6 starred reviews, 8 best of the year lists, and over 20 state award nominations, everyone is raving about Mirror Mirror! "Remarkable."—The Washington Post "This mind-bending poetry is accompanied by Masse's equally intelligent, equally amusing art."—Time Out New York for Kids What’s brewing when two favorites—poetry and fairy tales—are turned (literally) on their heads? It’s a revolutionary recipe: an infectious new genre of poetry and a lovably modern take on classic stories. First, read the poems forward (how old-fashioned!), then reverse the lines and read again to give familiar tales, from Sleeping Beauty to that Charming Prince, a delicious new spin. Witty, irreverent, and warm, this gorgeously illustrated and utterly unique offering holds a mirror up to language and fairy tales, and renews the fun and magic of both.

A new, definitive biography of the iconic and mysterious singer, Warhol superstar, Velvet Underground collaborator: influential solo artist Nico. YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL AND YOU ARE ALONE is a new biography of Nico, the mysterious singer best known for her work with the Velvet Underground and her solo album Chelsea Girl. Her life is tangled in myth--much of it of her own invention. Rock and roll cultural historian Jennifer Bickerdike delivers a definitive book that unravels the story while making a convincing case for Nico's enduring importance. Over the course of her career, Nico was an ever-evolving myth: art film house actress, highly coveted fashion model, Dietrich of Punk, Femme Fatale, Chelsea Girl, Garbo of Goth, The Last Bohemian, Heroin Junkie. Lester Bangs described her as 'a true enigma.' At age 27, Nico became Andy Warhol's newest Superstar, featuring in his one commercial break out hit film Chelsea Girls and garnering the position of chanteuse for the Velvet Underground. It wasn't Nico's musical chops which got her the gig; it was her striking beauty. Her seeming otherworldly and unattainable presence was further amplified by her reputation for dating rock stars (Brian Jones, Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, among others). She became famous for being Nico. Yet Nico's talent and her contribution to rock culture are often overlooked. She spent most of her career as a solo artist on the road, determined to make music, seemingly against all the odds, enduring empty concert halls, abusive fans, and the often perilous reality of being an ageing artist and drug addict. She created mesmerizing and unique projects that inspired a generation of artists, including Henry Rollins, Morrissey, Siousxie Sioux and the Banshees and Iggy Pop. Drawing on the archives at the Andy Warhol Museum and at Nico's record labels, various private collections, and rarely seen footage, and featuring exclusive new interviews from those who knew her best, including Iggy Pop and Danny Fields, and those inspired by her legacy, YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL AND YOU ARE ALONE reveals the complicated, often compromised, self-destructive and always head strong woman behind the one-dimensional myths.

Famous professor Joseph Wieder was brutally murdered, and the crime was never solved. Years later when literary agent Peter Katz receives an incomplete memoir written by a student of the murdered professor, he becomes obsessed with solving the crime.

A thrilling gothic horror novel about biracial twin sisters separated at birth, perfect for fans of Lovecraft Country and The Vanishing Half As infants, twin sisters Charlie Yates and Magnolia Heathwood were secretly separated after the brutal lynching of their parents, who died for loving across the color line. Now, at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, Charlie is a young Black organizer in Harlem, while white-passing Magnolia is the heiress to a cotton plantation in rural Georgia. Magnolia knows nothing of her racial heritage, but secrets are hard to keep in a town haunted by the ghosts of its slave-holding past. When Magnolia finally learns the truth, her reflection mysteriously disappears from mirrors—the sign of a terrible curse. Meanwhile, in Harlem, Charlie's beloved grandmother falls ill. Her final wish is to be buried back home in Georgia—and, unbeknownst to Charlie, to see her long-lost granddaughter, Magnolia Heathwood, one last time. So Charlie travels into the Deep South, confronting the land of her worst nightmares—and Jim Crow segregation. The sisters reunite as teenagers in the deeply haunted town of Eureka, Georgia, where ghosts linger centuries after their time and dangers lurk behind every mirror. They couldn’t be more different, but they will need each other to put the hauntings of the past to rest, to break the mirrors’ deadly curse—and to discover the meaning of sisterhood in a racially divided land.

The essential biography of one of music's most influential icons: Lou Reed. As lead singer and songwriter for the Velvet Underground and a renowned solo artist, Lou Reed invented alternative rock. His music, at once a source of transcendent beauty and coruscating noise, violated all definitions of genre while speaking to millions of fans and inspiring generations of musicians. But while his iconic status may be fixed, the man himself was anything but. Lou Reed's life was a transformer's odyssey. Eternally restless and endlessly hungry for new experiences, Reed reinvented his persona, his sound, even his sexuality time and again. A man of contradictions and extremes, he was fiercely independent yet afraid of being alone, artistically fearless yet deeply paranoid, eager for commercial success yet disdainful of his own triumphs. Channeling his jagged energy and literary sensibility into classic songs - like "Walk on the Wild Side" and "Sweet Jane" - and radically experimental albums alike, Reed remained desperately true to his artistic vision, wherever it led him. Now, just a few years after Reed's death, Rolling Stone writer Anthony DeCurtis, who knew Reed and interviewed him extensively, tells the provocative story of his complex and chameleonic life. With unparalleled access to dozens of Reed's friends, family, and collaborators, DeCurtis tracks Reed's five-decade career through the accounts of those who knew him and through Reed's most revealing testimony, his music. We travel deep into his defiantly subterranean world, enter the studio as the Velvet Underground record their groundbreaking work, and revel in Reed's relationships with such legendary figures as Andy Warhol, David Bowie, and Laurie Anderson. Gritty, intimate, and unflinching, Lou Reed is an illuminating tribute to one of the most incendiary artists of our time.