My father was executive officer, which is second-in-command, on a ship called the Hull, one of three ordered into a typhoon by Admiral Halsey - an insane and sadistic decision.
Buddy Holly had something very different from the other great early rock n' roll stars, whether it was Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Bo Diddley. He came across as so ordinary, as such a nerd. You know, he was a big guy, and he carried a gun. He was anything but a nerd.
There's been a streak of vengeance and carnage in all of Dylan's records except for the Christmas record, since 2001, since 'Love and Theft.' Particularly on 'Modern Times' in 2006.
It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths.
'Money Changes Everything' is this terribly despairing, heartbreaking song.
Farber had a huge effect on me as a writer. I don't mean I write like him. Farber is, first of all, a great stylist, a great writer. Anyone can read Manny Farber's film criticism, whether that person is a novelist, a poet, another critic, a historian, and learn a lot about writing by reading him.
The Sixties are most generously described as a time when people took part - when they stepped out of themselves and acted in public, as people who didn't know what would happen next, but who were sure that acts of true risk and fear would produce something different from what they had been raised to take for granted.
Perhaps the most pernicious strain of contemporary criticism says one thing before it says anything else, says it to whatever historical event or cultural happenstance is supposedly at issue: 'You can't fool me.'
I'm a fan of Oliver Stone. I like his movies, I like his excess, and I think he has a great capacity for empathy and it comes out more powerfully in this movie than in any of his other films, even the formal 'I'm identifying with the underdog' movies like 'Born on the Fourth of July.'
People write memoirs - this is my take, anyway - out of a great sense of self-importance.
No failure in America, whether of love or money, is ever simple; it is always a kind of betrayal, of a mass of shadowy, shared hopes.
