Adam Langer is the Forward’s executive editor. Born and raised in Chicago, he is the author of the novels Crossing California, The Washington Story, Ellington Boulevard, The Thieves of Manhattan, The Salinger Contract and Cyclorama, as well as the memoir My Father’s Bonus March.
So you know where I’m coming from, I never got the whole Frank Sinatra thing. “On the Town?” Yeah, I liked that. “From Here to Eternity?” Sure, that too. But the whole tough guy “I’ll sock you in the jaw” persona has always been a turn-off. When Apple put him on its “Think Different” posters,…
A day before the show at the Beacon Theatre, I’m figuring this will be the last time I’ll see Bob Dylan perform. This doesn’t have anything to do with Dylan’s age — sure, he’s 73 and doesn’t play guitar in concert anymore, but he isn’t showing much evidence of slowing down. Just two years ago,…
Born Mikhail Peschkowsky in Berlin, Mike Nichols went on to become one of the greatest forces in American comedy and film. An early member of Chicago’s Compass Players, which went on to become Second City, one half of Nichols and May, director of “The Graduate,” “Catch 22,” and most recently “Charlie Wilson’s War,” Nichols has…
● You Have To F–KING EAT By Adam Mansbach Illustrated by Owen Brozman Akashic Books, 32 f–king pages, $14.95 I’m sure I won’t be the one critic Who’ll review Adam Mansbach’s new book in rhyme The idea’s hackneyed, but hell, what the f–k It’ll save space and a shitload of time. Like many a reader…
‘So, you went to see ‘The Death of Klinghoffer,’ right?” “Uh-huh.” “Can I ask you something?” That was my mother on the phone. She had been watching a rebroadcast of “Charlie Rose: The Week” where two lawyers, Martin Garbus and Floyd Abrams, were debating the hubbub surrounding the Metropolitan Opera premiere of John Adams and…
Near a barren tree in the middle of a bleak, gray landscape, the Chorus of Exiled Palestinians mills about onstage. Wrapped in dark garments, their weary aspects suggesting immigrants at Ellis Island, they contrast starkly with the largely empty crimson-and-gold Metropolitan Opera House, its tiers of box seats wedding caked above each other. In the…
Born Betty Joan Perske, the daughter of Jewish parents in the Bronx, Lauren Bacall would soon became the epitome of New York cool. She was the slim, caustic partner of Humphrey Bogart, whom she married at the age of twenty and starred with in such films as “To Have and Have Not,” “Dark Passage,” “Key…
It has become a depressingly familiar and ritualized cycle of mourning. I heard the news on Facebook. If I’d been on Twitter, I would have heard it there — Robin Williams dead at 63 of an apparent suicide. Those who knew him shared memories of his talent and his generosity. Those who met him once…
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