#plpick

Do Not Give Way To Evil: Photographs Of The South Bronx 1979-87 by Lisa Kahane. Invaluable document of the resilience of New York's toughest borough during the tail end of its roughest years. Much more than ruin-porn, these photographs ennoble their subjects, and Kahane is always keen to allow them to assert their resistance to their oppressive circumstances. Also contains some great images of John Ahearn's pioneering Fashion Moda gallery. #princelibrary #photography #art #newyorkcity #1970s #1980s #graffiti #bronx #plpick

Black Postcards: A Rock & Roll Romance by #DeanWareham. In contrast to the standard rock memoir of sudden fame and debauched excess, the singer and guitarist of the beloved Galaxie 500 and Luna offers a modest chronicle of a working musician navigating the egos of band mates and record label follies of the pre- and post-Nirvana eras, from indies to the majors, in bands that never broke beyond cult status. No book quite captures the gentle tedium of touring, and the modest pleasures of a musical life quite as well as this does. #princelibrary #music #memoir #Galaxie500 #Luna #indierock #plpick

#JoséParlá: Walls, Diaries, And Paintings. Among his many books, this excellent monograph is perhaps the single best introduction to the artists’s rich oeuvre. I am biased because he is an old and dear friend, but I will posit that Parlá’s work stands as graffiti’s single most successful and equilateral engagement with painting, and fine art history in general. Writing serves as one of his many means of engaging and interrogating the aesthetics of the entropy of urban surfaces; in his work the abstract gestures of the city’s inhabitants become an architectural element, as language is subsumed by the time and the city, and freed from narrative. You also think of Cy Twombly of course, and Robert Ryman in the skillful handling of paint, but the work is never encumbered by references. #princelibrary #art #painting #graffiti #plpick #lit @joseparla

Vineland by #ThomasPynchon. Being the child of hippie parents, this is of course my favorite Pynchon novel. I can think of few other books that so brilliantly capture the futile, blithely narcissistic and exciting legacy of the 1960s counterculture, and its reverberations against the paranoid social landscape of Reagan years. Pynchon’s technical prowess is on fine display here, as he weaves his trademark formal wackiness, and some of his most memorably drawn protagonists, deftly into what is perhaps his most coherently structured novel - not that coherency is ever a virtue to be celebrated for its own sake, or never not a good lie. #princelibrary #fiction #lit #plpick

Washington Square by #HenryJames. Dating in NYC has never not sucked. #princelibrary #fiction #newyorkcity #lit #plpick

Hollywood Babylon by #KennethAnger. The pioneering avant-garde filmmaker revealed a somewhat different facet of his sensibilities in this gleefully lurid chronicle of Hollywood scandals from the 1920s to the '50s, gleefully recounting trashy tales of sex, drugs, murder, and more sex. The veracity of many of the instances mentioned is dubious, which makes it even more of a fun read than it already is. Though it may initially seem incongruous with his films, they and this book both delight in popular culture and the inherent perversion at the heart of the fantasy of the cinematic image. #princelibrary #film #history #hollywood #plpick

The Big Payback: The History Of The Business Of Hip-Hop by #DanCharnas. The title says it all - this is the the story of the money, from Sylvia Robinson of Sugar Hill, Russell Simmons & Rick Rubin' Def Jam, Profile Records, Ruthless Records, The Source magazine, the Puffy era, Violator Management, and right up to the marketing-driven, you never thought that hip-hop would take it this far mainstream present. Very well-written and an addictive narrative - prepare to put aside your responsibilities for about a day or two once you start this. #princelibrary #music #business #hiphop #plpick

Swann's Way by #MarcelProust. Probably the best novel ever involving a baked good. Also the best novel ever. One day I will be fluent enough to read it in the original French. #princelibrary #fiction #novels #plpick