John Clellon Holmes, Jack Kerouac, and the Beat Generation
John Clellon Holmes met Jack Kerouac on a hot New York City weekend in 1948, and until the end of Kerouac's life they were-in Holmes's words-"Brother Souls." Both were neophyte novelists, hungry for literary fame but just as hungry to find a new way of responding to their experiences in a postwar American society that for them had lost its ......
From the contentious delay of the first clash in 1901 to the latest battle in 2023, The Egg Bowl: Mississippi State vs. Ole Miss, Third Edition updates the two previous editions to give the most accurate, in-depth overview of the Ole Miss-Mississippi State rivalry. For each game the narrative includes every scoring drive, every player who crossed ......
In the 1970s, British filmmaker Ken Russell (1927-2011) quickly gained a reputation as the enfant terrible of British cinema. His work, like the man himself, was regarded as flamboyant, excessive, and unrestrained. Inheriting and yet subverting the venerable mantle of British documentary, Russell did not fit comfortably in the context of a ......
The Pascagoula River is the largest unobstructed river in the contiguous United States. Because of this lack of restraint, the river has been left to rise and fall naturally with the seasons, overflowing annually into the adjoining bottomland forest.?This phenomenon makes the Pascagoula River one of the wildest rivers, surrounded by some of the ......
Family Stories from a Black-Owned Dairy, Louisiana to California and Beyond
Opened in 1907 in Shreveport, Louisiana, by Lizzetta LeFalle-Collins's grandfather, Black dairy farmer Angus Bates, Lakeside Dairy was a rarity in the post-Reconstruction South. The dairy thrived despite the time's challenging, racially oppressive, and hostile social and political climate. While Lakeside Dairy closed in 1943, Angus's life and work ......
Shakespeare, Literary Landmines, and an Eccentric Patron's Royal Obsession
Part literary mystery, part an examination of what constitutes fiction versus reality, Ghostwriter is based on the true story of author Lawrence Wells, 45, hired by the University of Mississippi in 1987 to ghostwrite a novel for a wealthy, eccentric donor (""Mrs. F,"" 75), who was convinced that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, was William ......
Born in the South Bronx to Puerto Rican parents, artist and writer George Perez (1954-2022) cut his teeth in the 1970s as an artist at Marvel who worked on lesser titles like The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu and Creatures on the Loose, and then mainstays like Fantastic Four and The Avengers. In the 1980s, Perez jumped ship to DC where he helped turn ......
Fallen Comrade: A Story of the Korean War tells the story of three young men from Clinton, Mississippi, who served in the US Marine Corps during the Korean War. Waller King, Joe Albritton, and Homer Ainsworth were childhood friends who grew up in the same neighborhood, went to the same schools, attended the same church, and eventually joined the ......
A devout Catholic, a visionary-and some say prophetic-writer, Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) has gained a growing presence in contemporary popular culture. While O'Connor professed that she did not have an ear for music, allusions to her writing appear in the lyrics and narrative form of some of the most celebrated musicians on the contemporary ......