Robert Becerra was a punk-rock legend, to those in the know
Los Angeles Times
September 19, 2023
“At a time when punk rockers frowned on guitar solos and flashy playing, Becerra embraced both, usually while stomping around the stage, leering at the audience and playing harder and faster than many of the hardcore bands that were taking over the L.A. punk scene.” Photo by Wild Don Lewis.

The real spiritual journey behind Tod Goldberg’s fake-rabbi desert antihero
Los Angeles Times
September 23, 2023
“Tod Goldberg has many enemies”

I thought I was done with Cormac McCarthy, but he wasn’t done with me
Los Angeles Times
June 14, 2023
“I’d given up on McCarthy. In the parlance of dating we’d drifted apart, we wanted different things from books, it wasn’t him but me. It turns out I was wrong.”

John Albert, punk pioneer and chronicler of L.A.’s underbelly
Los Angeles Times
May 9, 2023
“I have cut my hair short and can’t stop smashing windows.”

Ten Years After Sandy Hook
Los Angeles Times
December 14, 2022
“Ten years ago the unthinkable happened.”

Profile of Marie Mutsuki Mockett
Los Angeles Times
April 3, 2020
“I would tell people in New York that I was going to harvest and that sounded so exotic and weird to them.”

Hardboiled MFA
Crime Reads
August 1, 2018
“I’ve never regretted an afternoon spent reading a Jim Thompson novel.”

Are the Parkland Kids the Sex Pistols?
Medium
March 30, 2018
“The work that I’m making is a reflection of everything that I’m experiencing.”

Barry Gifford’s Lifetime of Outsiders
Los Angeles Times
March 16, 2018
“The first thing you see when entering Barry Gifford’s writing studio in West Berkeley is the portrait of Jack Kerouac…”

The Seeds of Black Flag Were Planted at a Journey Concert (with Keith Morris)
Cuepoint
October 19, 2016
“Punk may have already had its moment in New York and was bottoming out in London, but in Southern California it was this strange new thing that was alive with possibility.”

Eleven Extraordinary Hours: Interview with Pamela Erens
Tin House
May 12, 2016
“Men aren’t relegated to the waiting room anymore.”


My So-Called Life: Essay
Los Angeles Times
December 24, 2015
“Co-writing books is like being a really good karaoke singer: You have to capture the essence of your subject and stay true to the voice of the person on the page.”


Who Wants to Live in a Fucking Utopia?: Interview with Nathan Larson
Los Angeles Review of Books
December 14, 2015
“We are fucked up, we are violent, we are crazy, we are foolish, we are selfish, we are power mad, we are murderous, we are so many things, but we are not calcified.”


Death Trembled
Electric Literature
August 4, 2014
“A couple weeks before J.J. died, he called and left a message. He was standing outside a bar and saw me drive by. He told me to turn around and come have a beer with him. Maybe more. You never know. And then that laugh. I didn’t take the call, didn’t turn around, and now I’ll never know.”

The Fluffiest Biscuit
Oxford American
July 24, 2014
“Most people underestimate the complexity of the biscuit. Biscuits are delicate and fickle, like hothouse flowers. Cook them too long and they turn into tough little hockey pucks. If the temperature in the oven isn’t high enough, you get a texture that’s cakey, not flaky, and a biscuit without a swirling engine of steam inside it is no longer a biscuit but a bastard scone.”

Teenage Wasteland
Granta
January 29, 2014
“If nostalgia is the sensation of one’s past and present unexpectedly connecting in a way that reinforces the notion that you are exactly where you need to be, what I was feeling was the complete opposite of that.”

Dutch Harbor Nights
Granta
July 29, 2013
“The vibe in the sports bar is listing toward trouble.’”

Notes on Grief
Razorcake
April 13, 2013
“The sign hanging from an overpass read Pray for Newtown. But what if we don’t want to?”


James Joyce and Postmodernism: A Conflicted Catechism
Los Angeles Times
June 16, 2009
“Joyce is a modernist, but distinct from other modernists and because one can’t be something and post-something simultaneously, he creates crises of classification.”


Dogsbody: Debunking the Myth of Ulysses’ Impenetrability, One Pub at a Time
The Believer
June 2004
“Molly’s is an oasis of darkness in a city cursed with light.”