Mark Coleman
@markcoleman.bsky.social
writer, reader, diehard New Yorker, chief cook and bottle-washer
“Fascism was, in every way, Surrealism’s political and aesthetic doppelganger, its evil twin.”
www.equator.org/articles/sur...
www.equator.org/articles/sur...
Surrealism Against Fascism • EQUATOR
A century ago, artists who survived the trenches captured humanity’s capacity for destruction. What can they teach us about confronting the far-right in a new age of genocide?
www.equator.org
November 29, 2025 at 3:21 PM
“Fascism was, in every way, Surrealism’s political and aesthetic doppelganger, its evil twin.”
www.equator.org/articles/sur...
www.equator.org/articles/sur...
“Before, Rushdie’s storyland presented a radical future for the globally displaced. Now, Rushdie writes as a man displaced by time, by the vicissitudes of ageing not migration; his storyland is a memory mausoleum.”
www.newstatesman.com/culture/book...
www.newstatesman.com/culture/book...
In the autumn of Salman Rushdie
The author’s late style in The Eleventh Hour, his new collection of fiction, reveals a venerable writer displaced by time
www.newstatesman.com
November 29, 2025 at 2:47 PM
“Before, Rushdie’s storyland presented a radical future for the globally displaced. Now, Rushdie writes as a man displaced by time, by the vicissitudes of ageing not migration; his storyland is a memory mausoleum.”
www.newstatesman.com/culture/book...
www.newstatesman.com/culture/book...
Looking down a side street I saw a huge parade balloon being deflated. That’s the lingering image of my first NYC Thanksgiving. Luckily, that day was the only time I truly felt lonely in the city.
markcoleman57.medium.com/my-first-nyc...
markcoleman57.medium.com/my-first-nyc...
My First NYC Thanksgiving
My First NYC Thanksgiving By Thursday November 26 1981, I’d lived in New York City for a little more than eight months. Already ensconced in my second shabby rent-stabilized studio apartment and …
markcoleman57.medium.com
November 27, 2025 at 1:11 AM
Looking down a side street I saw a huge parade balloon being deflated. That’s the lingering image of my first NYC Thanksgiving. Luckily, that day was the only time I truly felt lonely in the city.
markcoleman57.medium.com/my-first-nyc...
markcoleman57.medium.com/my-first-nyc...
“The back room was an important forerunner for a branch of performance art: there the presentation of one’s own image was a major preoccupation. Life and art were integrated, sometimes to the extreme of life-as-art.”
www.artforum.com/features/las...
www.artforum.com/features/las...
Last Call at Max’s
BETWEEN 1965 AND 1974, Max’s Kansas City was the central meeting place for the personalities, professions and mixtures of mediums that characterized the culture of the period. Painters, poets, photogr...
www.artforum.com
November 24, 2025 at 9:41 PM
“The back room was an important forerunner for a branch of performance art: there the presentation of one’s own image was a major preoccupation. Life and art were integrated, sometimes to the extreme of life-as-art.”
www.artforum.com/features/las...
www.artforum.com/features/las...
“I parked the stroller. The mother was dressed like Janis Joplin but Janis Joplin threaded by Chanel. It was a Janis without the hard alcohol or deep acne scars or being bullied in Port Arthur, Texas”
dirt.fyi/article/2025...
dirt.fyi/article/2025...
Songs Ojai
Man Burmaster on sunbathing in hell.
dirt.fyi
November 23, 2025 at 9:57 PM
“I parked the stroller. The mother was dressed like Janis Joplin but Janis Joplin threaded by Chanel. It was a Janis without the hard alcohol or deep acne scars or being bullied in Port Arthur, Texas”
dirt.fyi/article/2025...
dirt.fyi/article/2025...
Reposted by Mark Coleman
Here's a spelling-corrected version of my latest essay: same exciting content on a different platform. link in comments
November 18, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Here's a spelling-corrected version of my latest essay: same exciting content on a different platform. link in comments
Here's a spelling-corrected version of my latest essay: same exciting content on a different platform. link in comments
November 18, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Here's a spelling-corrected version of my latest essay: same exciting content on a different platform. link in comments
“with his Coke-bottle glasses, buck teeth, bow tie and stingy-brimmed fedora, he seemed freakishly straight – an American type not unlike William Burroughs or David Lynch.”
J. Hoberman · Desperate Character: Rambunctious R. Crumb
Rambunctious and often offensive, R. Crumb draws freely on pre-existing racial and gender stereotypes, and always draws...
www.lrb.co.uk
November 17, 2025 at 1:52 AM
“with his Coke-bottle glasses, buck teeth, bow tie and stingy-brimmed fedora, he seemed freakishly straight – an American type not unlike William Burroughs or David Lynch.”
Cookie Mueller, who died today in 1989, was a singular talent. Her autobiographical short stories still ring funny and true. She packed a lot of living into her tragically foreshortened life.
markcoleman57.medium.com/book-review-...
markcoleman57.medium.com/book-review-...
Book Review: Paging Dr. Mueller
Walking through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories by Cookie Mueller
markcoleman57.medium.com
November 10, 2025 at 10:57 PM
Cookie Mueller, who died today in 1989, was a singular talent. Her autobiographical short stories still ring funny and true. She packed a lot of living into her tragically foreshortened life.
markcoleman57.medium.com/book-review-...
markcoleman57.medium.com/book-review-...
writing an essay about Nobel Prize winning author Patrick Modiano; each of the half-dozen novels I’ve read is haunted by a fraught period in young adulthood I call The Silver Summer
November 4, 2025 at 6:47 PM
writing an essay about Nobel Prize winning author Patrick Modiano; each of the half-dozen novels I’ve read is haunted by a fraught period in young adulthood I call The Silver Summer
“a dish of what they called ‘river prawns’ which I would call signal crayfish (invasive little bastards)…tasted of boiled spiders.” we need this kind of clear-eyed and iron-stomached criticism in the US
www.thetimes.com/life-style/f...
www.thetimes.com/life-style/f...
Maido review — The world’s best restaurant? It was dismal
Why do critics keep celebrating and rewarding places like Maido in Lima? I hated it
www.thetimes.com
October 29, 2025 at 8:42 PM
“a dish of what they called ‘river prawns’ which I would call signal crayfish (invasive little bastards)…tasted of boiled spiders.” we need this kind of clear-eyed and iron-stomached criticism in the US
www.thetimes.com/life-style/f...
www.thetimes.com/life-style/f...
photo by Tom Duncan: 48 Ninth Avenue in 1973. The 14th Street corner looks just as desolate as it did when I lived there 1981-85. The ground-floor diner where I bought coffee every morning was a Luncheonette and the building hadn’t yet been painted white. Otherwise exactly the same. Eerie.
October 28, 2025 at 12:19 AM
photo by Tom Duncan: 48 Ninth Avenue in 1973. The 14th Street corner looks just as desolate as it did when I lived there 1981-85. The ground-floor diner where I bought coffee every morning was a Luncheonette and the building hadn’t yet been painted white. Otherwise exactly the same. Eerie.
One of my Rolling Stone articles that never went online was a 1997 piece about rising R&B singers; I remember D’Angelo’s interview as a highlight, wish I could go back and look for clues about his subsequent career. RIP
October 15, 2025 at 2:47 AM
One of my Rolling Stone articles that never went online was a 1997 piece about rising R&B singers; I remember D’Angelo’s interview as a highlight, wish I could go back and look for clues about his subsequent career. RIP
Just when I thought Greil Marcus has lost his touch he comes up with this
October 10, 2025 at 4:27 PM
Just when I thought Greil Marcus has lost his touch he comes up with this
Mick Jagger’s theme song for Slow Horses is the best Rolling Stones related music since “Start Me Up” in 1981
October 10, 2025 at 2:16 PM
Mick Jagger’s theme song for Slow Horses is the best Rolling Stones related music since “Start Me Up” in 1981
“What was once the promise that food could be a source of knowledge, culture, and joy now feels more like the pressure that every meal must be the best one, that the risk of trying something unvetted — once the whole point — is too great.”
www.eater.com/food-culture...
www.eater.com/food-culture...
Nobody Wants to Be a Foodie
How “foodie” went from badge of honor to cringey term to pejorative smear and all the way back again.
www.eater.com
October 8, 2025 at 7:15 PM
“What was once the promise that food could be a source of knowledge, culture, and joy now feels more like the pressure that every meal must be the best one, that the risk of trying something unvetted — once the whole point — is too great.”
www.eater.com/food-culture...
www.eater.com/food-culture...
“More than any single institution, the Claremont faction has generated a philosophy for Trump’s second administration, and its ongoing attempt to radically redefine America.”
www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2025/1...
www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2025/1...
Donald Trump, Charlie Kirk and the Claremonsters
Meet the philosophical cabal remaking America
www.newstatesman.com
October 4, 2025 at 6:11 PM
“More than any single institution, the Claremont faction has generated a philosophy for Trump’s second administration, and its ongoing attempt to radically redefine America.”
www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2025/1...
www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2025/1...
Disturbing. This young man is profoundly troubled - lost. Not sure why his book was published let alone reviewed at length in the NYT.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/b...
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/b...
Bob Dylan Might Be His Dad. But the Star of His Book Is His Mom.
www.nytimes.com
October 4, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Disturbing. This young man is profoundly troubled - lost. Not sure why his book was published let alone reviewed at length in the NYT.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/b...
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/b...
Would you read a book of loosely linked essays and stories about NYC during the early 1980s? Let me know markcoleman57.medium.com/my-im-modest...
My (Im)Modest Book Proposal
STEP LIVELY (and watch the closing doors): Onboarding NYC 1980–85
markcoleman57.medium.com
September 19, 2025 at 8:51 PM
Would you read a book of loosely linked essays and stories about NYC during the early 1980s? Let me know markcoleman57.medium.com/my-im-modest...
Living in the USA is so dark right now I wish Gary Indiana was still around to write one of his “untrue crime novels” about what we’re all going through
markcoleman57.medium.com/against-nost...
markcoleman57.medium.com/against-nost...
AGAINST NOSTALGIA: Gary Indiana’s Unsentimental Journey
Author Gary Indiana in 1989, photo by Robert Mapplethorpe
markcoleman57.medium.com
September 15, 2025 at 6:10 PM
Living in the USA is so dark right now I wish Gary Indiana was still around to write one of his “untrue crime novels” about what we’re all going through
markcoleman57.medium.com/against-nost...
markcoleman57.medium.com/against-nost...
When I went to elementary school in the 1960s we had civil defense drills every month but nuclear war seems less threatening than active shooters, I can’t imagine being a kid today
August 28, 2025 at 12:11 AM
When I went to elementary school in the 1960s we had civil defense drills every month but nuclear war seems less threatening than active shooters, I can’t imagine being a kid today
what gets lost in this mostly spot-on essay is the gap between crankiness and nuanced criticism. Like so much public discourse these days reviews don’t have to be a binary: positive or negative
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
How Music Criticism Lost Its Edge
Music writers were once known for being much crankier than the average listener. What happened?
www.newyorker.com
August 26, 2025 at 1:08 AM
what gets lost in this mostly spot-on essay is the gap between crankiness and nuanced criticism. Like so much public discourse these days reviews don’t have to be a binary: positive or negative
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Lurker is an astonishing movie, totally original take on the sick twisted bond between celebrities and their retinues
August 24, 2025 at 1:03 AM
Lurker is an astonishing movie, totally original take on the sick twisted bond between celebrities and their retinues
No mention of Sonic Youth's "Catholic Block" but otherwise an original look at the Church of Rome's cultural influence during the 1980s. alternate title: The *Other* Religious Right
www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...
www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...
Among the Blasphemers | Gerald Howard
For at least a year, the mail room in Penguin’s New York headquarters utilized a bomb-sniffing dog—named, for some unknown reason, Yalta—to screen packages. On one especially unnerving Saturday the fe...
www.nplusonemag.com
August 13, 2025 at 7:52 PM
No mention of Sonic Youth's "Catholic Block" but otherwise an original look at the Church of Rome's cultural influence during the 1980s. alternate title: The *Other* Religious Right
www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...
www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...
Proud to announce The Prospector is part of this week’s Memoir Monday roundup. Check out editor Sari Botton’s Memoirland Substack. It’s a treasure chest of personal essays.The Prospector was my first friend and mentor in NYC; he mastered the lost art of urban scavenging.
medium.com/@markcoleman...
medium.com/@markcoleman...
The Prospector
Jeff was a garbage broker, a speculator in recyclables, a trash tout. He picked investments out of the flotsam and jetsam left in the…
medium.com
August 11, 2025 at 7:12 PM
Proud to announce The Prospector is part of this week’s Memoir Monday roundup. Check out editor Sari Botton’s Memoirland Substack. It’s a treasure chest of personal essays.The Prospector was my first friend and mentor in NYC; he mastered the lost art of urban scavenging.
medium.com/@markcoleman...
medium.com/@markcoleman...