RaveThe Washington Independent Review of Books... compelling ... Richtel enthusiastically and compassionately demystifies the science and the story of one of the most intricate and misunderstood landscapes of human biology — and the most rapidly changing, perhaps most crucial branch of medical research ... Richtel’s accessible prose is pithy and tight, swift and straightforward. At times, though, he pushes the metaphor envelope...However, he does this with good reason and to great effect. For those of us without medical degrees, Richtel’s brushstrokes allow us into a world where laymen would otherwise be lost. He knows when to give the gas and when to pump the brakes ... a celebration of life and the journey we all share.
William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg
RaveWashington Independent Review of BooksRandomly open a page, and the reader will discover Burroughs and Ginsberg riffing and meditating seamlessly, endlessly, without segues—creating a dialogue that spiderwebs into myriad threads, roaming wildly into a forest of topics ranging from the power of buffalo skulls and the spiritual properties of peyote to preferred methods of soup preparation and the best way to eat a grapefruit. There\'s rarely a dull moment at the Burroughs house. For aficionados of these two literary lights and the Beat movement in general, this is an illuminating artifact and essential addition to the collection.
Sam Shepard
RaveThe Washington Independent Review of BooksIn Sam Shepard's Spy of the First Person, an anonymous narrator, rendered nearly helpless from a crippling condition, spends his days confined... His final work, Spy of the First Person, imbued with Shepard's characteristic hauntingly muscular prose and poetic leaps of percussive language, is not so much an epitaph as it is an encore. A restless farewell ... A novella of sorts, clocking in at 96 pages written in terse chapters — some comprised of only five sentences...Weaving a tapestry of voices, our narrator takes the reader on a road trip of the mind, chasing vivid memories scattered across another familiar Shepard landscape, the Southwest ... Some may scratch their heads, finding Spy of the First Person's bleak staccato bluntness and dark meanderings more akin to an epic poem than traditional narrative form ... Spy of the First Person stands as a mile-marker to a writer who worked when his hands no longer could.
Sam Shepard
RaveThe Washington Independent Review of BooksOut of the chute, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and actor goes straight for the throat in his latest literary offering, The One Inside, setting the tone for a sprawling, strikingly beautiful raw-bone odyssey where the past stalks the present like a specter that can find no rest; where the living cannot break the chains of the dead ... In essence, The One Inside is pure Sam Shepard — an American master of the surreal, the gothic, and the ties that bind ... Broken into short, fractured chapters, the book deftly navigates between traditional novel narrative, lyrical prose, and straight-up dialogue. A culmination of a life’s work is at play all at once, and every inch is infused with Shepard’s muscular prose, wry humor, keen eye, and rhythmic flourish. You feel as if he’s pulled the tanned leather right from his boots and the worn indigo fabric from his favorite pair of jeans.
