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In this collection of stylish and cogent essays, cultural historian Luc Sante offers his incomparable take on icons from Arthur Rimbaud to Allen Ginsberg, Rudolph Giuliani to Robert Mapplethorpe, New York to New Jersey, Buddy Bolden to Bob Dylan, Magritte to Tintin, along with meditations on cigarettes, the invention of the blues, hipness, New Year's Eve, and more.
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
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1356 people want to read
About the author
Lucy Sante
102 books236 followersLucy Sante was born in Verviers Belgium and emigrated to the United States in the early 1960s. Since 1984, she has been a teacher and writer, and frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books. Her publications include Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York, and The Factory of Facts and Folk Photography. She currently teaches creative writing and the history of photography at Bard College in New York State.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
December 24, 2010
Luc Sante is coolest guy I've never met, and this book made me feel excited for once, instead of burdened, to have been born a human being.
Humanity is terrible. Humanity stands in front of the subway doors during rush hour, yap-yapping into its cellphone. Humanity sends homeless, mentally-ill men with life-threatening medical problems and dementia out into the freezing December night. Humanity uses emoticons and can't be fucked to work the shift key or distinguish between a contraction and a possessive, because what is the English language anyway but some used-up and degraded old whore who just exists to be exploited in whatever crass, hasty way satisfies your needs?
Right, but despite all of this humanity has, like Ezra Pound, written a few good poems, and we need guys like Luc Sante so they can remind us of this.
As I've commented elsewhere, one can't help but notice that this world fucking sucks. For me, periodic rediscovery of culture -- often books, but also music, sometimes visual art -- is much of why I'm able to stick around in it. Luc Sante is a guy who has immersed himself in all this sweetness and light (and smokey basements, and fart-funked dancehalls), whose prose transmits his knowledge and enthusiasm with the easy infectiousness of conjunctivitis.
I moronically returned this book to the library before reviewing it, so I can't give a helpful listing of what the essays are about because I forget everything that happens to me and am invariably left only with a hazed impression of whatever has just occurred. I think the first few are about living in New York in the late-seventies/early-eighties? There's a memorable one about Sante working in a New Jersey factory during high school, which displays what I love most about this guy: the perfect tone he takes when he writes about himself. He's not self-deprecating, but honest and a bit teasing, and he always takes himself -- in particular his younger self -- not too seriously but seriously enough. This is what made the last essay, about Rimbaud, one of my favorites. Sante writes so honestly and with such compassion about how he saw things as a younger person, in a way that strikes me as endearing and pretty rare. I can't quite describe it, but there's this level of self-knowledge and comfort and some gentle mockery but admiration and simultaneous distance and intimacy that also spills over when he's writing about other subjects.
These subjects include music, photography, Tintin, cigarettes (one of his best essays), and a whole bunch of other stuff. I didn't love all of them equally (in the music section I was a bit bored by the Mekons, while the Dylan was a stand-out), but none of them were boring and bad. This is no minor feat in our era, which I often feel is characterized by everyone on the planet's mistaken conviction that they (we) have something important or interesting to say. As this website (and review) demonstrate, everybody's a critic. Unfortunately most people's criticism is no fun to read, because it's actually hard to say anything interesting and worthwhile about cultural products, let alone to express that in compelling language that itself has got great aesthetic merit -- unless, apparently, you are this guy Luc Sante. He bangs this shit out without missing a beat, and I found the end product so enjoyable that when I'd finished, I felt depressed and didn't want to start a new book. I had to recall what I'd admired about it -- this image of a man so seeped in and enthralled by culture -- to get myself excited about reading something else.
It reminded me of the way The Savage Detectives made me feel -- that these boys who'd previously annoyed me in the abstract with their poetry-reading and blues-listening and Bowery-slumming and bohemian aesthetics -- were actually onto something great, something I'd been missing out on. That if I paid more attention to the things that they cared about, I might stop missing vast portions of the world that I had been neglecting through my lazy snobbishness. That if I did investigate the things of the world that had excited them like this, then maybe I wouldn't hate it so much.
Okay, so now please excuse me, gotta read some Rimbaud. Hopefully I'm not too old already for it to have an effect.
Recommend this one. Thanks to David Giltinan for the heads-up.
Humanity is terrible. Humanity stands in front of the subway doors during rush hour, yap-yapping into its cellphone. Humanity sends homeless, mentally-ill men with life-threatening medical problems and dementia out into the freezing December night. Humanity uses emoticons and can't be fucked to work the shift key or distinguish between a contraction and a possessive, because what is the English language anyway but some used-up and degraded old whore who just exists to be exploited in whatever crass, hasty way satisfies your needs?
Right, but despite all of this humanity has, like Ezra Pound, written a few good poems, and we need guys like Luc Sante so they can remind us of this.
As I've commented elsewhere, one can't help but notice that this world fucking sucks. For me, periodic rediscovery of culture -- often books, but also music, sometimes visual art -- is much of why I'm able to stick around in it. Luc Sante is a guy who has immersed himself in all this sweetness and light (and smokey basements, and fart-funked dancehalls), whose prose transmits his knowledge and enthusiasm with the easy infectiousness of conjunctivitis.
I moronically returned this book to the library before reviewing it, so I can't give a helpful listing of what the essays are about because I forget everything that happens to me and am invariably left only with a hazed impression of whatever has just occurred. I think the first few are about living in New York in the late-seventies/early-eighties? There's a memorable one about Sante working in a New Jersey factory during high school, which displays what I love most about this guy: the perfect tone he takes when he writes about himself. He's not self-deprecating, but honest and a bit teasing, and he always takes himself -- in particular his younger self -- not too seriously but seriously enough. This is what made the last essay, about Rimbaud, one of my favorites. Sante writes so honestly and with such compassion about how he saw things as a younger person, in a way that strikes me as endearing and pretty rare. I can't quite describe it, but there's this level of self-knowledge and comfort and some gentle mockery but admiration and simultaneous distance and intimacy that also spills over when he's writing about other subjects.
These subjects include music, photography, Tintin, cigarettes (one of his best essays), and a whole bunch of other stuff. I didn't love all of them equally (in the music section I was a bit bored by the Mekons, while the Dylan was a stand-out), but none of them were boring and bad. This is no minor feat in our era, which I often feel is characterized by everyone on the planet's mistaken conviction that they (we) have something important or interesting to say. As this website (and review) demonstrate, everybody's a critic. Unfortunately most people's criticism is no fun to read, because it's actually hard to say anything interesting and worthwhile about cultural products, let alone to express that in compelling language that itself has got great aesthetic merit -- unless, apparently, you are this guy Luc Sante. He bangs this shit out without missing a beat, and I found the end product so enjoyable that when I'd finished, I felt depressed and didn't want to start a new book. I had to recall what I'd admired about it -- this image of a man so seeped in and enthralled by culture -- to get myself excited about reading something else.
It reminded me of the way The Savage Detectives made me feel -- that these boys who'd previously annoyed me in the abstract with their poetry-reading and blues-listening and Bowery-slumming and bohemian aesthetics -- were actually onto something great, something I'd been missing out on. That if I paid more attention to the things that they cared about, I might stop missing vast portions of the world that I had been neglecting through my lazy snobbishness. That if I did investigate the things of the world that had excited them like this, then maybe I wouldn't hate it so much.
Okay, so now please excuse me, gotta read some Rimbaud. Hopefully I'm not too old already for it to have an effect.
Recommend this one. Thanks to David Giltinan for the heads-up.
May 20, 2012
They talk about Luc Sante as if he's the Second Coming of the English language – "a prose style to die for", "one of the handful of living masters of the English language", "transcendental prose", but I thought he came across, thankfully, as a chatty, enthusiastic and extremely well-informed guy who has a lot of interesting interests. But – shoot me if you must – I think he has a tendency to say some really unsurprising things about the stuff he chooses to write about. I glommed onto the Dylan piece "I is Someone Else", where he reviews "Chronicles", and it was, you know, pretty good – what I got from it was this great quote – which is actually Stephen Crane :
An artist, I think, is nothing but a powerful memory that can move itself through certain experiences sideways and every artist must be in some things as powerless as a dead snake.
That's brilliant! I might get that tattooed that on my left arm, next to the Sanscrit word for "onions" which I had done in 1994. It's supposed to be a different word but these mistakes happen quite frequently, apparently.
Well, I liked the other music pieces too, like the review of the psychedelic freak-beat cd box "Nuggets":
On the psychedelia front alone, there's zit-cream metaphysics (the Electric Prunes), brain-pan alley (the Elevators)…insufferable la-la twaddle (Fenwyck) and bobbing for meatballs (the Bees)…
What happened to the Castaways, whose falsetto- and Farfisa-driven "Liar Liar" is th eeriest number in the box and whose photograph reveals them to have been classic chess-club geeks? Or the Nightcrawlers, whose "Little Black Egg" is to psychedelia roughly what Paul Klee was to surrealism?
I want to have thought up zit-cream metaphysics! And brain-pan alley!
So essays, huh. Or should we say short articles and reviews. There's a section on New York and its phenomena such as Rudolph Giuliani and John Gotti; there's Woodstock '99; Victor Hugo, Rimbaud and Rene Magritte (sounds like the beginning of a Woody Allen sketch where they all go to a party and try to pick up comedy moose); Tintin, Walker Evans and Wisconsin Death Trip; and finally – finally – a brilliant piece on Robert Mapplethorpe :
Perhaps Mapplethorpe was grasping, vulgar, deceitful, disloyal, inconsiderate, exploitative, shallow, calculating, cruel, vain, racist, anti-Semitic and so on, but then, too, perhaps his biographer and his memorialist are complying with current convention, which prescribes brutal candor rather than reverence in treating the recent dead. This stricture might actually be a new spin on the denial of death, particularly in regard to Aids; piety entombs its subjects, but malicious gossip does tend to keep them in the room.
In passages like that you can see a mind in motion like a kittiwake catching a codfish, fast, elegant, precise and true.
December 2, 2010
"Kill all your Darlings" is a collection of essays by Luc Sante, a writer with a breathtaking command of the English language. This may have something to do with his learning English as a second language as a child (he was born in Liege, Belgium in 1954 and his family moved to the U.S. in the early 1960s) -- one thinks of Nabokov, another writer for whom English was not the first language, but who achieved a mastery of the language superior to that of most native speakers. At any rate, Sante writes so fluidly, with such grace (but without showing off), that the reader is happy to buy whatever story he's spinning.
The essays in this collection include pieces on art, photography, poetry and music, and some more idiosyncratic meditations -- on cigarettes, on factory work, on 'hipness', on the harm done to New York City by Rudy Giuliani, on the particular madness that characterizes New Year celebrations. Sante's Belgian origins are reflected in essays about Magritte and Tintin, respectively. Other pieces deal with Victor Hugo, the photography of Walker Evans and of Robert Mapplethorpe. There is a moving tribute to Allen Ginsberg, who lived in the same NY apartment building as Sante for over ten years.
Though I had no great prior interest in the musical evolution of Bob Dylan or the origin of the blues, Sante's writing is so seductive that I read both pieces, and was riveted throughout. He's just that good. This is an awe-inspiring collection.
(on edit) My favorite essay was hands-down the one about cigarettes. Though Tintin was pretty fun as well.
The essays in this collection include pieces on art, photography, poetry and music, and some more idiosyncratic meditations -- on cigarettes, on factory work, on 'hipness', on the harm done to New York City by Rudy Giuliani, on the particular madness that characterizes New Year celebrations. Sante's Belgian origins are reflected in essays about Magritte and Tintin, respectively. Other pieces deal with Victor Hugo, the photography of Walker Evans and of Robert Mapplethorpe. There is a moving tribute to Allen Ginsberg, who lived in the same NY apartment building as Sante for over ten years.
Though I had no great prior interest in the musical evolution of Bob Dylan or the origin of the blues, Sante's writing is so seductive that I read both pieces, and was riveted throughout. He's just that good. This is an awe-inspiring collection.
(on edit) My favorite essay was hands-down the one about cigarettes. Though Tintin was pretty fun as well.
February 26, 2011
It is possible even for a vehement reader to become jaded into a tell-me-a-story mentality while in the midst of reading a string of novels one after the other. We can forget the responsibilities of an active reader, to analyze, to connect, to derive opinions, and instead sit numbly as an audience member, applauding at the appropriate moments and waiting for the next act to carry us along.The beauty of a collection of essays, especially one written by a passionate author of varied interests, such as this one, is that it will awaken the reader to confront their own passions, stir up a response, and open doors to previously un-contemplated forms, ideas, people and attitudes.
We are lucky, as readers, to have Luc Sante, for just such a stirring-up. I was led to him due to his introduction to the NYRB edition of Novels in Three Lines, though I've long coveted a copy of Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York, perched seductively in the sociology section of my bookstore. Sante has a predilection for studies in the small artifacts of American history, the small keyholes from which we can view a cultural trend. I regret not acknowledging in my review of Novels in Three Lines how much it reminded me of Wisconsin Death Trip, and was thus thrilled to see that Sante had also made the same connection, and wrote about it in his essay "The Department of Memory." I read most of this book with my laptop whirring furiously beside me, searching the Magritte paintings, the Evans photos, the Charley Patton recordings, keeping up with all the mixed media Sante so joyously explores. The joy is contagious, and has extended my interests from what I had previously connected to Sante's work to new realms in jazz and folk music, poetry and literature, painting and photographic arts, and the nature of "hip," both the '60's definition, and it's current manifestation. Sante is totally hip, as another goodreads member wrote, "the coolest guy you've never met." This book is a lesson in cool.
We are lucky, as readers, to have Luc Sante, for just such a stirring-up. I was led to him due to his introduction to the NYRB edition of Novels in Three Lines, though I've long coveted a copy of Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York, perched seductively in the sociology section of my bookstore. Sante has a predilection for studies in the small artifacts of American history, the small keyholes from which we can view a cultural trend. I regret not acknowledging in my review of Novels in Three Lines how much it reminded me of Wisconsin Death Trip, and was thus thrilled to see that Sante had also made the same connection, and wrote about it in his essay "The Department of Memory." I read most of this book with my laptop whirring furiously beside me, searching the Magritte paintings, the Evans photos, the Charley Patton recordings, keeping up with all the mixed media Sante so joyously explores. The joy is contagious, and has extended my interests from what I had previously connected to Sante's work to new realms in jazz and folk music, poetry and literature, painting and photographic arts, and the nature of "hip," both the '60's definition, and it's current manifestation. Sante is totally hip, as another goodreads member wrote, "the coolest guy you've never met." This book is a lesson in cool.
May 18, 2025
I admit I am not the mind, the reader nor the writer, that lends his time well to personal essays. They (the essays) wear on me and cause me to drift between lost imagery and stolid opinions until I knit my brow so tight I may as well rip my head off and chuck it in a pile of unsorted laundry. I speak here in specific and general of those essayists that assail my willingness to be immediately critical of persistent events: a life already lived, a circumstance already lost to annals of history that offer no real glimpse into the mindset of those actors that stumbled that stage, a painting or portrait or written work that could speak for itself if any of us would just fuckin’ read the damn thing. So, no, I didn’t think overmuch of Sante’s collection here. Those first two parts were laden with nuanced and affected examinations of cultural, societal, and psychological charms that I could not help but appreciate being expounded upon. The rest of it? The wash. Sante has a wonderful purpose and voice, but nothing can be said for lack of style especially if it relies on substance to be heard.
February 14, 2021
Descubrí a Luc Sante por su magistral texto en el libro de los Beastie Boys (donde describe de una forma tan gráfica el NYC de principio de los 80 que casi se puede escuchar y oler) y desde ese momento me lancé a buscar toda su obra. Este libro es una recopilación de artículos publicados en su mayoría a principio de los 2000, donde toca todos sus temas favoritos: el asco que le da el Nueva York moderno, la música y la gente con buenas dosis de ironía y de acierto.
April 23, 2008
I became aware of Luc Sante from his review of Chronicles, which is included here, and is one of the best pieces ever about Dylan. The rest of the book is as good or better, especially his tales of New York. Now I need to read his Lowlife.
June 25, 2023
Lucy, as she now calls herself, once described herself as a magpie: 'I look for shiny things'. The title of this work, Kill All Your Darlings, is an example. The line was widely used as a piece of writing advice, and ascribed to Faulkner, Oscar Wilde, Eudora Welty, G.K. Chesterton, Chekov, as well as Stephen King. Not quite so shiny is where it really came from: Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch.
The New York I encountered in the late 70's was hardly the heroin-chic place Lucy described. Calcutta without Imperial architecture came to mind. A parochial place imagining it was where it was at.
Lucy can write, and her piece on Dylan was an astonishing homage to the man, as unique as the only concert Dylan gave in Vietnam: A one-off. The writing is reminiscent of Nick Tosches, without his grit or dark humor.
Too many of Lucy's interests were not mine: a factory where reading is tolerated, cigarettes, photographs and sadomasochism.
When there was interest, we get things like Magritte without mirth, the blues described lengthily without the lemon bite of irony. Throughout, image obsession blurred the picture.
The New York I encountered in the late 70's was hardly the heroin-chic place Lucy described. Calcutta without Imperial architecture came to mind. A parochial place imagining it was where it was at.
Lucy can write, and her piece on Dylan was an astonishing homage to the man, as unique as the only concert Dylan gave in Vietnam: A one-off. The writing is reminiscent of Nick Tosches, without his grit or dark humor.
Too many of Lucy's interests were not mine: a factory where reading is tolerated, cigarettes, photographs and sadomasochism.
When there was interest, we get things like Magritte without mirth, the blues described lengthily without the lemon bite of irony. Throughout, image obsession blurred the picture.
July 13, 2015
I have read occasional pieces by Luc Sante all over and liked what I read, so I decoded to pick up his essay collection, Kill All Your Darlings: Pieces 1990-2005 (2007). Sante is a true connoisseur of outsider, underground, hipster history, culture and music. He has become obsessed with the his adopted country and its language after moving here as an immigrant from Belgian. The first section is comprised of essays about place-mostly New York, but not exclusively-see "In A Garden State." (New Jersey) He relishes the fact that he lived in the Lower East Side among the heroin addicts before gentrification, "My Lost City." He is extremely interested in the history of places as well, see "The Ruins of New York," "A Riot of My Own," etc. The essays in the second section are more abstract as he muses on things like the world "dope" in "Why Do You Think They Call It Dope?" He wistfully remembers the heyday of cigarette smoking in America in "Our Friend the Cigarette." In the third part there are essay related to music like "I Is Somebody Else," which is a review of Bob Dylan's Chronicles Vol.I. Also, there is a look at the original Master of New Orleans Funk, "I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say" and a discussion of blues in "The Invention of the Blues." In the fourth part of the collection, Sante displays his ability to write with authority about art: seminal artist such as Victor Hugo in "The Octopus with the Initials VH" and Charles Magritte in "The Detective," as well as pop culture icons such as Tintin in "The Clear Line" and contemporary photography artists like Walkers Evans in "The Hunger Artist" and Robert Mapplethorpe in "The Perfect Moment." Part Five gives the reader more personalized essays that expresses the importance of poetry to the author. in "The Total Animal Soup of Time" it is Allen Ginsberg's singular poem "Howl" that has captured his imagination. And in the final essay, "A Companion of the Prophet," it is Rimbaud's poetry and life that is his inspiration. In an eclectic collection like this essay that about things that interest me are much more interesting to read, but all of his writing has a kind of impressive sheen that nonnative writers like Conrad and Nabokov before him bring to their new language.
January 23, 2009
Sante is a really interesting and talented writer. This book is a collection of essays, analysis, and observations about his own life, places he's lived, and people. I loved the two sections of pieces, primarily the pieces about New York and the essay about the pleasures of smoking. I thought the weaker pieces were those about specific musicians and authors, but even those mostly captured my attention. Sante is a culture absorber and yet writes beautifully. I couldn't help but to read entire pieces aloud...
November 5, 2007
A great collection of essays. Sante really narrows down his smart eyes on New York City and how the city has changed. He's a beautiful writer, where he choses his subject and just nails it down to the page. His piece on Dylan's Chronicles is a great piece as well.
So one gets everything from Rimbaud to the beginning of Blues music to Walker Evans to Woodstock 1999. Sante is a great essayist.
So one gets everything from Rimbaud to the beginning of Blues music to Walker Evans to Woodstock 1999. Sante is a great essayist.
September 3, 2009
sort of greil marcus-lite at times, but some of these essays made me want to start either clapping or writing.
January 3, 2023
Un libro para los enamorados de Nueva York. ¡Ojo! No se trata de esa Nueva York que aparece en las fotos de tus amigos celebrando el año nuevo en mitad de Times Square. No, es otra Nueva York, una mucho más sórdida y romántica y para la que las agencias de viajes no ofrecen paquetes especiales con todo incluido porque esa Nueva York ya no existe. Por suerte para nosotros, los buscadores de memorias que no vivimos, quedan Lucy Sante y sus libros.
November 17, 2020
great chunk of essays by cultural critic and writer Luc Sante. I was put on to him in the first issue of incredible new magazine Maggot Brain. The essays in this collection include pieces on Rudy Giuliani, Magritte, Tintin, Robert Mapplethorpe, Allen Ginsberg and of course Bob Dylan. Great stuff.
Cant wait to read more!
Cant wait to read more!
Read
October 1, 2022I regretfully do not possess the cultural capital to fully appreciate this one, but the essay on cigarettes was so lovely and made me wistful about the first time I tried smoking, so I stuck along for the ride. would read again but not on an ereader.
September 25, 2017
The work of a master.
November 23, 2022
What a joy to read these essays. Joan Didion pales in comparison when it comes to riveting essays.
May 6, 2023
best pieces are those on music, especially the blues
July 10, 2024
Lucy Sante can do no wrong when she writes.
July 3, 2014
I'm one of those people who found Low Life unreadable, despite being really interested in the subject matter (or I thought I was, till I read the book, which knocked it out of me). So I was a little weary of this collection of essays, mostly criticism of arts and books, but also interested.
And as a book of criticism, it's all right. Sante writes well enough, though his style is sort of obvious, his reaches for lyricism echoing other writers who are more distinctive, more confident about putting it all on the line. And the subjects he writes about-- the Mekons, Mapplethorpe, Rimbaud-- are hardly subject that have never been written about before; while he's articulate, he's hardly breaking new ground, and his opinions aren't exactly a revelation, either. If he were in my arts weekly, I'd read him every week and it probably wouldn't change my consumption patterns at all.
The best stuff here, which I first wanted to race through, is the more autobiographical stuff. Maybe it's because the rest of it could have been written, has been written, by nearly anyone, the ground level specificity of Sante's more autobiographical stuff stood out by contrast. His writing about his summer job before college is great, and some of the other moments when he talks about his own experiences, with Rimbaud, with Ginsburg, about feeling Belgian-- are striking and distinctive.
Part of me feels Sante has been let down by the marketplace: no one wants to read him at his best enough to overlook paying him to write the things a dozen other folks can write just as well. But Sante bears some responsibility for not pushing that harder, too.
And as a book of criticism, it's all right. Sante writes well enough, though his style is sort of obvious, his reaches for lyricism echoing other writers who are more distinctive, more confident about putting it all on the line. And the subjects he writes about-- the Mekons, Mapplethorpe, Rimbaud-- are hardly subject that have never been written about before; while he's articulate, he's hardly breaking new ground, and his opinions aren't exactly a revelation, either. If he were in my arts weekly, I'd read him every week and it probably wouldn't change my consumption patterns at all.
The best stuff here, which I first wanted to race through, is the more autobiographical stuff. Maybe it's because the rest of it could have been written, has been written, by nearly anyone, the ground level specificity of Sante's more autobiographical stuff stood out by contrast. His writing about his summer job before college is great, and some of the other moments when he talks about his own experiences, with Rimbaud, with Ginsburg, about feeling Belgian-- are striking and distinctive.
Part of me feels Sante has been let down by the marketplace: no one wants to read him at his best enough to overlook paying him to write the things a dozen other folks can write just as well. But Sante bears some responsibility for not pushing that harder, too.
January 5, 2008
this essay collection was a mixed bag for me. i didn't like at all the personal essays about the authors life in new york, thoughts on new york, criticism of other people's lifestyles in new york, etc. but i LOVED his essays about music, art and writing -- three subjects he obviously cares a lot about. and what's so wonderful about the ones that are included here is that they seem to be about some of his favorite artists, writers and musicians -- or at least ones he feels a deep personal connection to. i think my favorite essay in the whole book is one about the origins of the blues. he has obviously read most everything there is to read on the subject, and listened to most everything there is to hear. not only is the essay informative, but it puts forth a viewpoint that i had never heard articulated but had always had this weird inkling must be correct: namely that the blues are a form of modernism, not a form of folk music. it's something i noticed as i became exposed to earlier and earlier country blues: the further back in time you go, the more modern the sensibility of the artist. kind of weird, but not once you've read luc sante's essay. anyway, i really recommend the second half of this book. maybe i even would have liked the first half more if i hadn't read it first.
February 20, 2011
My favorite read of the year thus far; specifically the essay "Our Friend the Cigarette," which charts in severe detail how cigarettes pervaded our entire culture, and how we collectively had to untangle ourselves from the mass addiction...it's the last word on cigarettes. Aside from this essay, there are speculations on the origins of blues music ("The Invention of the Blues"), the trailblazings of Bob Dylan ("I is Someone Else"), mindtrips through a New York that no longer exists but one I'd visit in a heartbeat; the opener, "My Lost City" is particularly detailed, beautiful and nostalgic. The collection as a whole is not consistently great, though consistently good, and when it's great, it's visceral transportation.
February 13, 2008
A collection of essays and expanded articles from Luc Sante, and in a way his most enjoyable book. From autobiographical pieces, an excellent nod to Victor Hugo, from punk rock to an amazing fond remembrance/social history of cigarettes, Dylan to Buddy Bolden to Allen Ginsberg, and much in between and around. Many of the essays, if you are of a certain age, remind you of those drunken cultural-political discussion/arguments you had with friends that would go for hours on everything from books to records to films to revolution to sex. By the way "Kill all your darlings" is a quote from Faulkner giving a little advice to a young writer.
June 5, 2008
On the strength of the opening piece about his memories of New York City in the 70s and 80s, Luc Sante is to my mind far and away the best writer to come out of Manhattan's original wave of punk rock enthusiasts. I'm not even aware of anyone who comes close.
The variety and range of subject matter, and his ability to be erudite and extremely funny when writing on seemingly just about anything, make Mr. Sante tops in my book. His politics are deeply left in a very fundamental way, too, which is nice.
Sante mentions being staggered by Joseph Mitchell's McSorley's Wonderful Saloon. At his best Sante writes at Mitchell's level, which is about the highest praise I can give.
The variety and range of subject matter, and his ability to be erudite and extremely funny when writing on seemingly just about anything, make Mr. Sante tops in my book. His politics are deeply left in a very fundamental way, too, which is nice.
Sante mentions being staggered by Joseph Mitchell's McSorley's Wonderful Saloon. At his best Sante writes at Mitchell's level, which is about the highest praise I can give.
December 14, 2008
I loved "low life" & I've enjoyed catching his articles/reviews here & there, so I had to get this when I saw it in the library. It's a great collection on a wide variety of subjects. his writing about the lower east side in the 70's reminded me a lot of Joseph Mitchell's writing style.
Really loved his review of Dylan's "Chronicles" & his piece called "The Invention of the Blues" which I seemed like is was a review of Alan Lomax's "the Land Where the Blues Began" which is a book I liked reading but Sante's gave it a whole other perpective on the book as the history of blues music and it's main characters..
Really loved his review of Dylan's "Chronicles" & his piece called "The Invention of the Blues" which I seemed like is was a review of Alan Lomax's "the Land Where the Blues Began" which is a book I liked reading but Sante's gave it a whole other perpective on the book as the history of blues music and it's main characters..
March 13, 2023
Essays by Luc Sante, the cultural critic, historian, and prose craftsman who wrote Low Life, the exceedingly brilliant history of underclass New York City. Kill All Your Darlings, published in 2007, covers a wide range of topics - everything from the etymology of the word "dope" to the birth of the blues to a character analysis of Bob Dylan - but he still comes most alive when writing about New York. The wonderfully rich essays include reflections on the Lower East Side in the 1970's, a first hand account of the 1988 Tompkins Square Park riots, and — ever a connoisseur of con men — a pair of meditations on two quintessentially New York monsters: John Gotti and Rudolph Giuliani.
June 12, 2008
Quite possibly one of the most enjoyable essay collections I've ever read. While Sante's not exactly a serious acadmic all the time--his depth of inquiry rarely makes it past New Yorker levels--he does have some interesting and informative insights into several subjects, incl. the birth of the blues and subtly racist cultural analysis, living in new york in the late seventies, being a jaded hipster, the enigmatic writings of bob dylan, etc. etc. Moreover, blurbs on the book jacket hold true: Sante just has a way with prose.
March 25, 2016
Sante again uses language economically and on point. Not many collections of essays come together this way, easy to read yet challenging to define in any order or theme beyond the urban focus...but even that word does not do his particular style of insight justice. It is too weak a word really...doesn't allow us into the psychological and personal research that happens beyond the very clear communication of a continuous riling against that bad kind of progress that the rest of us can only meekly whine about.
July 2, 2016
Cada peso pagado de este libro lo vale, es una joya. Artículos, crónicas y textos de largo aliento que igual hablan del Nueva York de los 70 y 80, como de Bob Dylan, la historia del Blues o de como la palabra "funk" fue cambiando de sentido desde su origen en el Jazz. Periodismo y crítica de alto vuelo.
En sus páginas hay información invaluable sobre arte. Aquí supe de fotógrafos como Walker Evans y Dorothea Lange, además de ver con otros ojos a Victor Hugo y Rimbaud.
No hay hoja de desperdicio.
En sus páginas hay información invaluable sobre arte. Aquí supe de fotógrafos como Walker Evans y Dorothea Lange, además de ver con otros ojos a Victor Hugo y Rimbaud.
No hay hoja de desperdicio.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 27, 2008
Highly recommended to anyone who is remotely interested in the history of New York City, blues, art, writers, or smoking cigarettes. From Victor Hugo using artist materials in ways that some contemporary artists could only dream of inventing, to Buddy Bolden blowing his cornet with his band circa 1900 in a smoke filled gymnasium, Sante covers a plethora of topics with a won't let you stop reading, brilliant prose.
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