Mel Brooks’ memoir is a film-by-film, joke-by-joke chronicle of the legendary director and producer’s life and career
Rien Fertel
rienfertel
Contributor, The A.V. Club. Rien is the author of three books, most recently, Drive-By Truckers' Southern Rock Opera.
Rooney treads familiar ground in her third novel, but her writing—like her characters—has matured
Two novels in translation and two Rachels (Cusk and Kushner) crack our top 10
Author Mike Rothschild is less interested with uncovering the identity—or identities—of Q than he is with tracing…
“It’s like this though,” André Benjamin nervously shouted over the chorus of boos. “I’m tired of close-minded folks,…
A certain amount of escapism through books would have been more than understandable in 2020. (And by “a certain…
Over the past half-century, Don DeLillo has explored, in fiction that often feels presciently real, “the strangest,…
There’s a scene in the first essay of Helen Macdonald’s Vesper Flights that should make any nature lover vibrate…
In March 2019, when Alex Trebek shared his diagnosis of stage IV pancreatic cancer, it seemed the entire world…
“If you’ve seen one pandemic,” epidemiologists like to joke, “you’ve seen... one pandemic.” Influenza strains and…
The coronavirus pandemic and its attendant shutdown has had a way of warping one’s sense of time—alternately making…
In Samanta Schweblin’s new novel, Little Eyes, kentukis are the year’s must-have smart device. “Nothing more than a…
It’s no doubt hackneyed to wish that David Carr were still around, writing us through these strange and often…
The modern alternative music scene began, most appropriately, at a house party on Valentine’s Day, 1977. The…
“Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
He plays a juror in the made-for-TV film The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk (1989) and a hot dog vendor in the…
Two men arrive in a village by foot. Though sometimes they arrive in a car, or a tank, or by air. They arrive at…
Heaven help us, Hell spare us, Hollywood save us, Sean Penn has penned another novel, a sequel to last year’s Bob…
You likely know the work, though you might not know the name: J. Michael Straczynski. A writer for hire in the…
Theodor Seuss Geisel, or Dr. Seuss as he was best known, published 60-plus children’s books in his lifetime—the…