.Harvey Pekar

FROM BOTH aesthetic and economic standpoints, comics are in bad shape these days. Several years ago, the largest companies--Marvel and DC--set up exclusive arrangements...

BEFORE Jack Kerouac, before Allen Ginsberg, there was ... Herbert Huncke? Though born a year after William Burroughs, Huncke (1915-1996) had been living an underground life...

DEBUT RECORDS was one of the first record labels owned by musicians--and not just any musicians, but jazz legends bassist Charlie Mingus and drummer...

IF ANYONE remembers Samuel Ornitz at all today, it's as a screenwriter who was one of the Hollywood 10; his reputation as a novelist...

Trumpeter Steven Bernstein, slide guitarist David Tronzo and tubaist Marcus Rojas--collectively known as Spanish Fly--are among the most in-demand musicians today on their respective...

DURING THE heyday of big bands (1935­45), top jazz clarinetists abounded. Several--Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Jimmy Dorsey, Woody Herman--led highly popular outfits. For some...

THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS of Miles Davis and Gil Evans rank with those of Louis Armstrong/Earl Hines and Charlie Parker/Dizzy Gillespie as among the most noteworthy two-man efforts...

MANY READERS will find Fernando del Paso's great novel Palinuro of Mexico--at long last available in an American edition nearly 20 years after its creation--daunting...