The Orpheus Obsession is a young adult novel which deals with such interesting subject matter as rock stars, depression, mental illness, the duplicity of sexuality, weird, Francesca Lia Block-esque names, and statuatory rape. Unfortunately, however, few of these issues are dealt with in an entirely satisfactory manner. This is not to say The Orpheus Obsession is not worth reading; lying within this book is a DayGlo underworld which shines and pulses through the poetic details described by its 16-year-old narrator, Anooksha Stargirl. But the problem is, occasionally Stargirl stops being …

The popularity of Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea never really registered with me until recently. I had assumed it was an album that a lot of people had heard, but the latter-day cult phenomenon surrounding it had eluded me. This book, 29th in Continuum’s 33 1/3 series which examines “critically acclaimed and much-loved albums” (think liner notes expanded over a hundred pages), informed me that 50,000 copies of this record have been copped over the last two years – over a third of the album’s total …

The Wit in the Dungeon is a biography which explores the life of literary figure Leigh Hunt: a contemporary of several acclaimed authors and poets (such as Charles Dickens, Lord Byron, Percy and Mary Shelley, Elizabeth and Robert Browning, Keats, and Wordsworth), whose own fame has only continued to shine among literary academics. This is not to say that Hunt is not a fascinating figure of potential mass appeal; on the contrary, biographer Anthony Holden deftly sprinkles the text with Hunt’s life, ranging from discussions of his curious collections (he …

Confession: when I walked into Ann Arbor’s Shaman Drum Bookshop earlier this week for a reading of selections from the late poet’s newly collected works, I was not a fan of Ted Berrigan. He was self-indulgent and brash, I thought, a low-rent Frank O’Hara, playful to a fault; thoroughly convinced that every time he fucked, farted or popped an amphetamine, the act itself was worthy of a poem. Sure, I liked the rebellion of it, the same way I like any writing that pisses all over the tired concept of …