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Got something to say about your favorite album? 33 1/3 just might print it

Liner notes
David Barker does not know exactly how many proposals he has read since he started 331/3, the esteemed series of small, somewhat flimsy, uniformly sized books about records. He doesn't know how he wants to commemorate its 10-year anniversary next spring.

By: EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | June 21, 2012

Interview: Christopher Hayes looks at an unfair America

Merit Testing
After a decade of national failure, the public's trust in our most essential institutions is at a record low.

By: JOHN J. KELLY | June 19, 2012

We need to talk about Hans Rickheit

Peverse delight
I want to have sex with Hans Rickheit.

By: S.I. ROSENBAUM | June 15, 2012

Interview: Gail Collins gets inside the Lone Star State

Talkin' Texas
Texas is a landfill of political insanity that's fast declining into a privatized wasteland for all but its wealthiest residents.

By: CHRIS FARAONE | June 05, 2012

Finding out what makes the Meat Puppets tick with a new oral history

They Ain't Heavy, They're the Kirkwood Brothers
As half-assed a form as it can be, the rock-band oral history is a folk form nonetheless, with a great claim to authenticity.

By: JAMES PARKER | May 30, 2012

Jonathan Lethem braves Talking Heads’ Fear of Music

Fear factor
In every single rock documentary on the BBC, there comes a certain moment.

By: EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | June 01, 2012

They call me Oil Can

Baseball, drugs, and life on the edge
Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd, a Mississippi native who lives in East Providence with his wife and two children, is one of the most complex, controversial players ever to don a Red Sox uniform.

By: EXCERPTED FROM THE BOOK BY DENNIS "OIL CAN" BOYD AND MIKE SHALIN | May 23, 2012

Interview: Oil Can Boyd on playing the game

Baseball ‘takes away a lot of hurt’
This week, I had an hour long chat with Oil Can Boyd.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | May 23, 2012

Kate Bornstein’s queer evolution

Cult following
Feisty transgender icon Kate Bornstein's newest book, A Queer and Pleasant Danger (Beacon Press), is best summed up by its subtitle: The True Story of a Nice Jewish Boy Who Joins the Church of Scientology and Leaves Twelve Years Later to Become the Lovely Lady She Is Today.

By: THOMAS PAGE MCBEE | May 25, 2012

Interview: Rory O’Connor digs social media

News trust
Rory O'Connor has been thinking about trust and the media for a long time.

By: DAN KENNEDY | May 14, 2012

Hilary Mantel's power play

King's Man
Endings, perhaps more than beginnings, set the tone in historical fiction.

By: CLEA SIMON | May 11, 2012

Getting to know Philip Larkin with a new edition of his poems

Philip is a punk rocker
"A smash of glass and a rumble of boots/Electric trains and a ripped-up phonebooth/Paint-spattered walls and the cry of a tomcat/Lights going out, and a kick in the balls." These lines are not by Philip Larkin, of course — they're by Paul Weller.

By: JAMES PARKER | April 26, 2012

Eileen Myles crosses all borders

Askew at high velocity
"Gender is a technology," Eileen Myles says.

By: THOMAS PAGE MCBEE | April 25, 2012

Joe Brainard’s collected works

Pleasure principle
The sui generis artist and writer Joe Brainard invented a literary form.

By: WILLIAM CORBETT | April 25, 2012

Interview: Benjamin Busch remembers

War stories
Perhaps best known as Officer Anthony Colicchio on HBO's The Wire, as well as for roles in Homicide: Life on the Street, The West Wing, and the HBO film Generation Kill, actor and filmmaker Benjamin Busch, the son of esteemed novelist Frederick Busch, has also been a US Marine Corps officer who served two tours of duty in Iraq.

By: JOHN J. KELLY | April 13, 2012