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History behind the birth of rock & roll in general and the artists most influential and inspirational to a young Elvis Presley.

Typically brilliant research’n’writin’ by Lauterbach.

Impressive writing so far.

Page 123:
“I’m an addict, Tom”, she said quietly. “A dope addict.”
“My God, Carla! You’re kidding .”

My what a long, slow slide it’s been. This took forever to get interesting.

Single girls go bad in 1950s New York City. So far - so meandering.

Love this clumsily written horror classic.
Huge fan of both films based on this novella.

I’ve been rereading this since Sunday for some reason.
Oh yeah- somebody posted a few songs by Peter Laughner on YouTube and I recalled Lester’s moving combo obituary, tribute and blanket condemnation of rock & roll hero worship and the pitfalls there in.

And then I got hooked.

“Driven out by Cromwell, the myth {of the cavalier} found sanctuary in the American South. And flowered its finest amid mill waste. And in those small grubby towns where Main Street was rutted by wagon wheels, and the last gas lamp on the outskirts looked tired all night long.”

Nelson Algren is a brilliant writer.

I’ve read Nelson Algren for over 40 years.

This collection of stories I’d never read before now remind me why I keep returning to his writing.

More depraved bastards per story than your typical anthology of tales of Depression era Texas.

Just finished “Thundermug”- an unpleasant account of a three week stay in a filthy & poorly heated county jail and of the kangaroo court of law in a blue steel and stone cage somewhere in Texas.

You won’t turn the page at the close of each story humming your favorite summertime pop tune but the writing’s superb.

Grim, dark literary fiction focusing on everyday life for the indigents of remote areas of Texas during the 1920s in the midst of the Great Depression. Apparently partially autobiographical.

Mostly road stories feature hoboes as main characters or unreliable narrators.

Five stories in - so far, remarkable stuff.

As stunningly beautiful as the 1st time I read it. For instance:

“He left in ceaseless rain, the saddest that ever fell. He went by streets both steep and narrow and the rain fell all the way.

In that hour when tugboats call and call, like lovers who have lost their way”.

P. 237
“Up from the long grieving river they called, past track and tower and dock, to windows long darkened and doorways long locked; old beaux that had walked Perdido Street long ago, returning to mourn the names of girls they had loved. They had plenty to spend and all night for loving.

But the windows were darkened, the doors locked, and the only girls whose names they knew had no name now but dust.”

From learning the art of back-alley condom or “O-Daddies” manufacturing
our protagonist limps towards the sleazier side of Storyville.
Pimps & pandering.

“There was love behind the curtains and love behind the doors. Love in the squares and love along the curbs… Where every window framed some love bird framed in flight. Where every screen door was a cage. What had been Storyville was now an aviary.”

Dove Linkhorn teams up with a fallen pimp Algren describes as one who:
“… could bear his cross so mournfully, a sort of Kiwanis Christ in a Bing Crosby shirt, resigned to insult and injury without shred of larceny and incapable of imposing his woes on others.”

Life laughs at a former predator’s fall from grace.

Haven’t read a page of this outstanding SF crime-thriller in a week. Got a 100 year old mother-in-law who’s gotten hard for my father-in-law to handle. He’s 90. Can’t lift her easily.
So. With my wife it’s down to Manhattan to assist. It’s very hard to find acceptable nursing care. I do nothing but read & watch Trump’s “excursion” on BBC. 4 days a week.

Maybe I’ll finish this someday soon.

Read a few more pages in the parking lot of a grocery while my wife went in to pick up a couple of essentials.

Gets very bloody, violent.

I intend to finish this but… it’s like B. B. King said: the thrill is gone.

Keep putting this book down. Haven’t been reading anything but newspapers and related mainstream (I.e., non-Right leaning) news items) These are times a man must stand up and do the boogaloo, to paraphrase James Brown.

Reading this between trips down to Manhattan to tend to elderly in-laws (responsibility comes with aging parents) and in doctors’ waiting rooms.

Tom Waits for no one.

Compelling!

Suddenly very violent. Compelling and well written.

This is has been alternately engaging and as cold as Pluto. The techno jargon is such a drag; the plot device intriguing: in order to solve a crime, the chief investigator travels to “a future” - as all potential futures are accessible. Only once observed by a traveler, that future ceases to exist.

Trip my aged ass out!

First story was by Archie Goodwin with awesome artwork by Angelo Torres.
Got my issues confused back there.
Brilliant cover by Frazetta.

First story’s by the great. Archie Goodwin as were most of the stories published in Creepy & Eerie. Artwork bu Joe Orlando. Very different artwork from that of his earlier EC Comics period.

There’s a letter to the editor by a future Underground Comix legend Jay Lynch.

So far - absolutely brilliant. What a page turner!