Random Lengths News | Books | AAN.org

Disillusionment at the Ancestral Courtnew

Recently, when the publication of a paperback version of my first book The Menuhins: A Family Odyssey (the book originally came out in hardcover in 1978), I remembered my visit to Brooklyn to meet my Hassidic ancestors.

Random Lengths News | Lionel Rolfe | 12-24-2014 | Original Work

An Elusive Utopia By The Seanew

The traditional happening places for the arts in Los Angeles are two–and it’s been this way since the ’20s and earlier. One is Echo Park near downtown and the other is Venice by the sea. But Venice has captured more of the romance, perhaps because its history has been rich and porous enough there’s this terrible tendency to want to sum it all up, to say what exactly it means.

Random Lengths News | Lionel Rolfe | 08-01-2013 | Nonfiction

Bankrupting Nature: Denying Our Planetary Boundariesnew

Global warming is but one of nine or 10 different ways in which human civilization is threatening to cross boundaries of over-consumption and overuse. These, will undermine the natural foundations on which our civilization is built.

Random Lengths News | Paul Rosenberg | 04-22-2013 | Books

Tags: Global Warming, Anders Wijkman and Johan Rockström

Phyl Van Ammers on the The Misadventures of Ari Mendelsohnnew

Phyl Van Ammers recently talked to Lionel Rolfe, the author whose most recent book is, “The Misadventures of Ari Mendelsohn: A Mostly True Memoir of California Journalism.” It is available on Amazon, both in paper and on Kindle. He will be doing a signing at Skylight Bookstore at 1818 N. Vermont Ave. in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles March 30 at 5 p.m.

Random Lengths News | Lionel Rolfe | 01-25-2013 | Author Profiles & Interviews

A Personal Odyssey To The Land Down Undernew

Southern California cultural arts thinker and writer Lionel Rolfe reflects on his time in Australia with Kron Nicolas and his wife as he recovers from the emotional strain of divorce.

Random Lengths News | Lionel Rolfe | 08-30-2012 | Original Work

The Truth About On The Roadnew

In his latest book, Gerald Nicosia has unlocked the dynamic of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, and not a moment too soon.

Random Lengths News | Lionel Rolfe | 01-02-2012 | Author Profiles & Interviews

Tags: Jack Kerouac, Gerald Nicosia, Neal Cassady, Lu Anne Henderson, Marylou in On The Road

The Sierra God Machinenew

This is an excerpt from Lionel Rolfe’s unpublished novel, “The Misadventures of Ari Mendelsohn,” a novel of the ‘60s.

Random Lengths News | Lionel Rolfe | 07-29-2011 | Excerpts

Vladimir Rodzianko -- The Real Ghost Of Rasputinnew

I never was too clear from Vladimir’s many and graphic memories of his time with Makarova of the exact gossip of who was doing what to whom. But Rodzianko talked with a certain enthusiasm about Nureyev’s famed collection of cock rings and his myriad of sexual peccadilloes. The rumors of which were mostly true, Rodzianko assured me.

Random Lengths News | Lionel Rolfe | 01-14-2011 | Original Work

The Misadventures of Ari Mendelsohnnew

This is the first chapter from the picaresque novel by noted author and journalist Lionel Rolfe, which recounts the sexual and political travails of the irascible, blacklisted title character, a reporter still harboring his besieged idealistic belief in humanity's innate goodness and America's dubious potential for good amid a reality of avarice, pragmatism, cynicism, and materialism.

Random Lengths News | Lionel Rolfe | 11-04-2010 | Excerpts

Tags: The Misadventures of Ari Mendelsohn, Lionel Rolfe

My Beef With The Editor Of The L.A. Times Book Reviewnew

Writer, thinker, and cultural critic Lionel Rolfe reflects on L.A.'s literary scene and the slow death of the Los Angeles Times.

Random Lengths News | Lionel Rolfe | 07-17-2009 | Books

Tags: Los Angeles Times, literature, book, criticism

Busted: America's Right-wing Heroes Mything In Action

Greenwald explores how GOP mythmakers and a compliant, sometimes worshipful media combine to inflate all-too-human right-wing leaders into heroic cultural icons, following the model of pill-popping, draft-dodging adulterer John Wayne, while Democrats are demonized as weak and hapless losers, and substantive issues disappear from view.

Random Lengths News | Paul Rosenberg | 04-04-2008 | Nonfiction

Tags: Glenn Greenwald, Great American Hypocrites: Toppling The Big Myths of Republican Politics, Nonfiction Reviews

Mything In Action: An Interview with Glenn Greenwald

Author Glenn Greenwald answers some key questions exploring themes in his forthcoming book, Great American Hypocrites: Toppling The Big Myths of Republican Politics.

Random Lengths News | Paul Rosenberg | 04-04-2008 | Author Profiles & Interviews

Tags: right-wing, Glenn Greenwald, Great American Hypocrites: Toppling The Big Myths of Republican Politics