Here are 2 books that Maybe Esther fans have personally recommended if you like
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Where Are Your Boys is the book I always wanted to write. Watching emo bands like My Chemical Romance and Paramore soar from suburbs to stardom during my high school years inspired me to take writing seriously, that a kid like me growing up in New Jersey with few connections to the media industry could find a backdoor in, because those bands did, too. With its dense population, adjacency to New York City, and a multitude of record stores and all-ages shows, New Jersey was the setting for much of emo's 2000s boom and the home of My Chemical Romance and many other important bands.
John Lurie makes me think of what it means to be an artist. It’s funny, though, because after watching three seasons of his TV show, I still wasn’t entirely sure who John Lurie was or why he had an HBO series.
Painting With John is hosted by a 60-something Lurie living in the Caribbean, slowed by chronic illness, musing on past misadventures with New York City icons like Basquiat and Bourdain while getting lost in his dreamlike paintings. Lurie's 2021 memoir fleshes out his story just enough: jazz saxophonist turned reluctant art house film star who side-stepped significant fame and money by unfortunate events and steadfastly chose creativity over compromise.
On the page, Lurie’s telling of these events is mystifying. I’m looking forward to a life of creativity with his voice in my head.
The quintessential depiction of 1980s New York and the downtown scene from the artist, actor, musician, and composer John Lurie
“A picaresque roller coaster of a story, with staggering amounts of sex and drugs and the perpetual quest to retain some kind of artistic integrity.”—The New York Times
In the tornado that was downtown New York in the 1980s, John Lurie stood at the vortex. After founding the band The Lounge Lizards with his brother, Evan, in 1979, Lurie quickly became a centrifugal figure in the world of outsider artists, cutting-edge filmmakers, and cultural rebels. Now Lurie vibrantly brings to…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
An extended meditation on late style and last works from "one of our greatest living critics" (Kathryn Schulz, New York).
When artists and athletes age, what happens to their work? Does it ripen or rot? Achieve a new serenity or succumb to an escalating torment? As our bodies decay, how do we keep on? In this beguiling meditation, Geoff Dyer sets his own encounter with late middle age against the last days and last works of writers, painters, footballers, musicians, and tennis stars who’ve mattered to him throughout his life. With a…
