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My discovery of Juan Rulfo – like that of Kafa – will without doubt be an essential chapter in my memoirs. I had arrived in Mexico on the same day Ernest Hemingway pulled the trigger – the 2nd of July 1961 – and not only had I not read Juan Rulfo’s books, I hadn’t even heard of him. It was very strange: first of all because in those days I kept up to date with the latest goings on in the literary...

There is an old joke about a confession. “Father, I must confess that I’ve sinned,” a man tells the priest, “I’m guilty of stealing.” The priest asks, “What did you steal?” “Well, a ham,” says the man. “What did you do with it?” Confusedly, the man responds, “I hid it under the bridge outside town.” “Well, just leave it there and say three Our Fathers for your penance.” He left the ham and said...

To study Nicolas Cages rise is also to study Francis Ford Coppolas fall from grace. You cannot write about one without the other. In the early to mid-80s, their trajectories were almost conversely linkedCage siphoning power from his uncles desperate need to work, like Michael Corleone growing stronger with the Godfathers faltering health. Except it wasnt Coppolas physical health that was...

Here is Rosebud Yellow Robe, a confident, handsome gentlewoman in early middle-age, looking off to her right, apparently indifferent to her portraitist. She wears a loose elk-skin ceremonial dress with beaded figures of cavalrymen and warriors worked in on fine sinew. It is a representation of the Battle of Little Bighorn, in which her grandfather had fought. If you were a child in New York in...

It’s odd to think that this history of artist David Edward Byrd started with a trip to the bathroom… but it did. However, this visit to the john was far removed from much of the history youre about to read. It didnt take place in the artist hatchery of 1960s Carnegie Tech (later Carnegie Mellon University), where Byrd studied. It wasnt among the grimy streets of New York, where Byrd first created...