James Parker
Turned On, his 1998 biography of the punk-rock performer Henry Rollins, has been described as “breathlessly brilliant” (New Musical Express) and “a modern-day Pilgrim’s Progress” (Feed.com). He was previously a staff writer for the Boston Phoenix, where he won New England Newspapers and Press Association awards for his reporting on history and religious issues, and an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for music criticism. In 2012, he was nominated for a National Magazine Award for his columns at The Atlantic. In 2017–18 he was the Institute of Liberal Arts journalism fellow at Boston College. Since 2011, Parker has been running the Black Seed Writers Group—a weekly writing workshop for homeless, transitional, and recently housed writers–and editing The Pilgrim, a literary magazine from the homeless community of downtown Boston.
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Illustration by Paul Spella. Source: Daniele Venturelli / … Is Theo Von the Next Joe Rogan?
Or is he something else entirely?
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Illustration by Paul Spella / The Atlantic. Sources: … The Rick Rubin Guide to Creativity
Can the legendary record producer’s book really make you into an artist?
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Illustration by Paul Spella. Sources: Express Newspapers / … The James Bond Trap
Ian Fleming created the superspy—and then couldn’t get rid of him.
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Brooke Palmer / Prime Video The Ridiculous Allure of Reacher
Why is Amazon’s show about Lee Child’s crime-busting former military policeman such a massive hit?
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Steve Pyke / Getty A Spiritual Manifesto for the Dispossessed
The late Pogues singer Shane MacGowan understood the depths of human despair, a feeling he plumbed on his song “The Old Main Drag.”
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Phil Fisk / Camera Press / Redux The Tyranny of Stuff
The letters of Seamus Heaney reveal that he was bedeviled by the same problem that overwhelms all of us.
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Illustration by Elizabeth Hart. Sources: Dimitrios Kambouris / … Comedians Only Care About Comedy
A new book cured me of any attachment to the idea of the stand-up as truth-telling philosophe.
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Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Anna Moneymaker; Getty. A Gory Amalgam of Truth and Spectacle
Trumpism hovers over the merger of the UFC and WWE.
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Illustration by Jan Robert Dünnweller. Sources: Richard McCaffrey … The Undoing of a Great American Band
Sly and the Family Stone suggested new possibilities in music and life—until it all fell apart.
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Munchmuseet Edvard Munch Lightens Up
A new exhibition offers a counterpoint to The Scream.
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Sinna Nasseri My God, This Is a Magical Country
A road trip across my adopted America
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Serge Picard / Agence VU / Redux A World Without Martin Amis
The small, cold shock of loneliness upon hearing of the great British comic writer’s death
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Writing Odes
When the universe gives you a gift, send a thank-you note.
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Adrian Dennis / AFP / Getty ‘Don’t You Think This Is a Bit Silly?’
Among the new king’s subjects on a soggy coronation weekend
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Illustration by Oliver Munday / The Atlantic. Sources: … Call of the Wild
The enduring appeal of watching human beings attempt to master the Alaskan backcountry
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Bananas
Their cartoon yellowness, their absurd curvature, their fragility, their cordial blandness
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Nicknames
What yours says about you
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Lauren Tamaki The Freakish Powers of Miley Cyrus and Lana Del Rey
The id of California—the id of America—is strong in both of them.
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Swearing
A well-turned curse can remind you of the power of language.
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Getty; The Atlantic All the Pretty Republicans
If Cormac McCarthy interpreted the humiliations of Kevin McCarthy
