Dan Wakefield’s books include the memoir New York in the Fifties, and he was editor of Kurt Vonnegut: Letters.
Christianity in this country has become almost synonymous with right-wing fanaticism, conservative politics and–courtesy of Mel Gibson–a brutally sadistic version of religious experience.
The best memoirs of recent years reveal “The Way We Live Now” as well as or better than most contemporary fiction.
A review of Cherry, by Mary Karr; On Writing, by Stephen King; and Ghost Light, by Frank Rich.
Back in the fifties, before the term “new journalism” was coined, back when Gay Talese was writing minor obituaries for the New York Times, Tom Wolfe was a grad student at Yale and Joan Di