White Noise by Don DeLillo

White Noise tells the story of Jack Gladney, his fourth wife, Babette, and four ultra­modern offspring as they navigate the rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. When an industrial accident unleashes an “airborne toxic event,” a lethal black chemical cloud floats over their lives. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the “white noise” engulfing the Gladneys—radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings—pulsing with life, yet suggesting something ominous. (Source: Goodreads.com)

Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom by Peter Guralnick

In a narrative that captures all the tumult and liberating energy of a country in division and transition, Sweet Soul Music is the story of the birth of modern rhythm-and-blues. Guralnick records the rise and fall of Stax Records – the Memphis powerhouse label that produced a string of classics from the likes of Otis Redding and Booker T. and the MGs – and other labels such as Atlantic, as well as profiling such major artists as Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, James Brown, Solomon Burke and Al Green. This is a fascinating tale of a decade that produced some of the finest music ever. (Source: Abebooks.co.uk)

Silence: Lectures And Writing by John Cage

Silence: Lectures and Writings is a book by American experimental composer John Cage (1912–1992), first published in 1961 by Wesleyan University Press. It is a collection of essays and lectures Cage wrote during the period from 1939 to 1961. In Paul Auster’s novel 4321, a friend introduces the protagonist to “Silence”, telling him “You have to read this, Archie, or else you’ll never learn how to think about anything except what other people want you to think.” Auster provides a short quote from Cage’s book “The world is Teeming: anything can happen”. (Source: Wikipedia.org)

Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews edited by Malcolm Cowley

Presents interviews with leading European and American authors which reveal some of their personal lives and working habits.

The Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock And Roll by Charlie Gillete

Just one of the best books about “rock ‘n’ roll” out there. This is essential reading for anyone interested in the rhythm & blues/ rock & roll/pop development. Mr. Gillett uses information about the best-selling records and how decisions by major/minor labels, production and/or writing teams shaped what became the three main branches of popular music. (Source: genzentender.com)

Octobriana and the Russian Underground by Peter Sadecky

Octobriana, a kind of Russian Barbarella is the spirit of the October Revolution, she became the heroine of an illegal magazine, secretly printed and circulated by hand in a number of Universities-composed of “samizdat” material smuggled out of the former Soviet Union, rarely seen collection of Soviet Underground dissent and resistance, many nude female illustrations. (Source: Goodreads.com)

The Street by Ann Petry

As a single mother, Lutie Johnson fights unwaveringly for her own dignity and to raise her young son Bubb to be a decent human being amidst all the poverty, violence and racist contempt that surrounds her. The setting is 116th Street on the Upper Westside of Manhattan. No one escapes this depraved world, where people inevitably become crude and dull and are driven to criminal acts of desperation. Lutie is determined to make the leap to a better life, but the wickedness of the streets and the malice of an inhuman system stand in her way with all their might. (Source: Googlebooks.com)

Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon

Chabon presents a hilarious and heartbreaking work—the story of the friendship between the “wonder boys”—Grady, an aging writer who has lost his way, and Crabtree, whose relentless debauchery is capsizing his career. (Source: Goodreads.com)

Last Exit To Brooklyn By Hubert Selby, Jr.

Described by various reviewers as hellish and obscene, Last Exit to Brooklyn tells the stories of New Yorkers who at every turn confront the worst excesses in human nature. Yet there are moments of exquisite tenderness in these troubled lives. Georgette, the transvestite who falls in love with a callous hoodlum; Tralala, the conniving prostitute who plumbs the depths of sexual degradation; and Harry, the strike leader who hides his true desires behind a boorish masculinity, are unforgettable creations. Last Exit to Brooklyn was banned by British courts in 1967, a decision that was reversed the following year with the help of a number of writers and critics including Anthony Burgess and Frank Kermode. (Source: Goodreads.com)

Raw Comic Magazines

RAW was a comic magazine in the field of underground, independent and alternative comics and was published in anthology form by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly from 1980 to 1991. One of the best-known works from RAW was Spiegelman’s 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus. (Source: Wikipedia.org)

Please stay tuned for Part 7 – soon on theecool.com