By Drew Grant 3/30/12 10:48am

Media

Video

Norman Mailer's son at rally yesterday (YouTube)

John Buffalo Mailer Shames Village Voice’s Sex Ads By Bringing Up His Dad (Video)


Yesterday, in a rally held in Cooper Square, the 33-year-old son of Village Voice co-founder Norman Mailer got up on the podium, reported Capital New York’s Joe Pompeo.

“It’s hard for me to be up on this podium today,” Mr. Mailer, who was there for a protest to shut down BackPages.com, the part of the Village Voice that’s been accused of sex trafficking in underage women, “because I’ve always loved the paper and what it stood for…to see them now, justifying their actions for this profit is heartbreaking.” Read More

By Kat Stoeffel 1/30/12 10:40am

Print Problems

filmforum copy

Citing Concerns About Backpage.com, Film Forum Pulls Advertising from Village Voice

The independent Manhattan movie house Film Forum has decided to pull its advertising from the Village Voice, citing concerns about Backpage.com, the classifieds site owned by Voice parent company Village Voice Media.

Longtime Film Forum director Karen Cooper told Off the Record that Nicholas Kristof’s Friday op-ed in The New York Times prompted her decision. Read More

By Emily Witt 10/19/11 8:41am

Good Morning

Morning Book Reads: Norman Mailer’s Apartment Up for Grabs and a Book Site for 20-Somethings

A hedge fund manager wants assurances that Norman Mailer’s curious apartment in Brooklyn Heights complies with zoning codes before he buys it. Or maybe he just found out that Mailer stabbed one of his wives with a penknife there. In any case, the buyer appears to have cold feet. Occupy Norman Mailer’s apartment? [NYT]

Book Riot is a book site for 18 to 34-year-olds. As this article points out, it does not seem to have made up its mind whether it’s for adults who like to read, or for adults who hate to read (viz. “Charles Dickens is reigning king of Dead White Guys You Should Have Read in High School, But Probably Just Read the Cliff Notes or Possibly Watched the BBC Mini-series.”) Read More

By Nate Freeman 4/19/11 11:53pm

Nightlife

The Wee Hours: ’70s Stud Turns 70

In a back nook of Elaine’s someone had placed a blown-up old cover of Quest magazine featuring the chiseled features of Chuck Pfeiffer. “CHUCK,” the headline read, “MYTHICAL MADMAN WARRIOR.”

“Seventy, it’s an odd age,” Mr. Pfeiffer told The Observer, staring at the younger version of himself, a decoration for his birthday party last Read More

By Lee Siegel 1/05/11 4:57pm

The Last Critic

The Whatever Western

Not to start the new year off on a dour note, but do you want to know why so many people have become hopeless about changing the political and economic mechanisms that rule our lives? Watch the 1969 True Grit and then go see the Coen brothers’ recent remake, which has just about all the Read More

8/18/10 3:00am

Super Hot Sexy Love Stories

Out of nowhere in Rick Moody’s new novel The Four Fingers of Death, there is a gay sex scene involving two astronauts flying on a rocket ship to Mars. “There was a sharp stabbing sensation, sort of how I imagine it must feel to find your innards impaled on a pike,” Mr. Moody Read More

By Lee Siegel 7/14/10 12:04am

The Last Critic

The End of Sex: Goodbye Highbrow Smut

A couple of weeks ago on the op-ed page of The New York Times, Camille Paglia declared Americans sexually dead. Some months before that, the essayist Katie Roiphe declared male American novelists literarily dead in the description-of-sex department. Just about a year ago, the critic Cristina Nehring published a book, The Vindication of Read More

By Chloe Malle 6/01/10 10:09pm

A Private Jitney for Jeff Koons’ Balloon Dog?

Apparently frustrated Manhattanites aren’t the only ones crawling eastbound along Montauk Highway in the heat of the summer, now at least their art can inch along next to them.

A few summers ago, with the advent of Petney–the Jitney-comparable branch of Pet Taxi–pet owners traveling east by no-dogs-allowed means were afforded the option of sending Read More