In our weekend reading: thoughts on Chloe Caldwell’s memoir, new writing from Dave Newman, and more.
We’re taking a break for the holiday; normal posting will resume on Monday.
“Backwards Motorcycle”: An Excerpt From Dave Newman’s “East Pittsburgh Downlow”
We’re very happy to be publishing an excerpt from Dave Newman’s new book East Pittsburgh Downlow, out now on J.New Books. As its publisher says, “Pittsburgh’s most famous citizen, Mr. Rogers, said ‘In times of crisis, look for the helpers. East Pittsburgh Downlow is the story of the helpers. It’s the story of the helpless and people desperately trying to help themselves. In more than 600 pages, lives will change and end and people will be re-born. Families will be saved. Love will find love because that’s what love sometimes does.”
Ditch Digging for the Butcher Lie
Ditch Digging for the Butcher Lie or Why Universities Are Terrible Places to Work by Dave Newman A cheapie beer on draft cost fifteen cents. A Budweiser, considered fancy, was a quarter. Bottles were available but no one could afford them. This was 1988, and I was seventeen years old. No one cared if under-aged kids drank, least of all the bartender, as long as you pretended to be an adult. I pretended to be an adult—divorced, pissed-off, working long […]
At the Bottom in a Place You Belong: A Review of Dave Newman’s “Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children”
Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children by Dave Newman Writers Tribe Books; 316 p. Dave Newman’s second novel, Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children, was released early last year, but I didn’t discover it until mid-December. I hadn’t read or even heard of his first novel, Please Don’t Shoot Anyone Tonight, but I stumbled across an article about him while Googling around about Dan Fante and Mark SaFranko. First things first: If the title doesn’t make you want […]