The black figure has always been a subject of entertainment in popular culture, as well as an image to sell things. In some ways, that’s how people relate to us—because they’ve seen us on television.
—
Derrick Adams
Fiction for Driving Across America: Herb and Rosalie Swanson at the Cocoanut Grove by Peter Orner
In the first installment in BOMB’s Fiction for Driving Across America series, Peter Orner reads his short story “Herb and Rosalie Swanson at the Cocoanut Grove,” published in BOMB 103’s literary supplement, First Proof.
Part of the Fiction for Driving series.
- Harmony Korine by Richard Bishop
- Jonathan Lethem and Lydia Millet
- Steve DiBenedetto by David Humphrey
- Zachary Lazar by Christopher Sorrentino
- Philip Seymour Hoffman by June Stein
- Raja Alem by Tom McDonough
- Joseph Bartscherer by James Welling
- Tav Falco by Erik Morse
- Indran Amirthanayagam and Adam Zameenzad
Interviews
- Fiction for Driving Across America: Herb and Rosalie Swanson at the Cocoanut Grove by Peter Orner
- Two Poems by Bradford Gray Telford
- Trauma by Patrick McGrath
- Two Poems by Elena Georgiou
- Two Stories by Paul Maliszewski
- And It’s Hard for Her to Imagine It Now by Hannah Pittard
- Yes (For Liz) by Linda Bamber
- Afterword to the play Alice Invents a Little Game and Alice Always Wins by Nick Flynn
First Proof
- Chris Martin by James Siena
- Paulina Ołowska: Between the titles, in some third language by Elka Krajewska
- Rachel Foullon by Betsy Sussler
Artists On Artists
More
- Pere Portabella’s The Silence Before Bach by Alex Waterman
- Hans Fjellestad’s Snails R Sexy by Sean Griffin
- Chicha is Coming by Renato Gómez
- Nico Muhly’s Speaks Volumes by Craig Lucas
- Suzy Shaw & Mick Farren’s BOMP! Saving the World One Record at A Time by Alan Licht
- Steve Katz’s Kisss & Alexandra Chasin’s Kissed
- The PoPedology of an Ambient Language by Urayoán Noel
- Paul Graham’s a shimmer of possibility by Todd Papageorge
- Robert Lyons’s Intimate Enemy by Kristin Prevallet
- Second Life’s Ars Virtua by Penelope Umbrico
- Ugo Rondinone: Big Mind Sky by Saul Ostrow
- El Anatsui: Zebra Crossing by Patricia Spears Jones
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Two decades after it happened Herb Swanson began to tell it at dinner parties.
When I was thirteen, two missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came to the house to follow up on a conversation from the week before with my mother.
The playwright discusses his formative years, rejuvenation of historical material, and how race is coded into theatergoing itself.
Originally published in
BOMB 103,
Spring 2008
Featuring interviews with Joseph Bartscherer, Steve DiBenedetto, Jonathan Lethem and Lydia Millet, Zachary Lazar, Harmony Korine, Tav Falco, and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
