Mark Coleman
@markcoleman.bsky.social
writer, reader, diehard New Yorker, chief cook and bottle-washer
Paperback copies of this book were EVERYWHERE during the 1970s along with deathless classics such as Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/o...
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/o...
Erich von Däniken, Who Claimed Aliens Visited Earth, Dies at 90
www.nytimes.com
January 12, 2026 at 10:15 PM
Paperback copies of this book were EVERYWHERE during the 1970s along with deathless classics such as Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/o...
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/o...
My annual reading list, on a new platform (for now).
open.substack.com/pub/markcole...
open.substack.com/pub/markcole...
2025: Book By Book
Measuring the year in books. Rereading Swann's Way was a treat, even better the second time around. The William F Buckley biography was the best non-fiction I read this year.
open.substack.com
December 30, 2025 at 3:45 PM
My annual reading list, on a new platform (for now).
open.substack.com/pub/markcole...
open.substack.com/pub/markcole...
“In The Cafe Of Lost Youth reads like the oral history of an au courant underground scene. Set in 1950s Paris, it could just as well be downtown NYC in the 1980s or any local bohemian place and time of your choosing.”
markcoleman57.medium.com/silver-summe...
markcoleman57.medium.com/silver-summe...
Silver Summer: Exhuming the Buried Legacy of Lost Youth in 5 Novels by Patrick Modiano
“Sometimes you remember certain episodes of your life and you need proof that you haven’t dreamed them.”
markcoleman57.medium.com
December 21, 2025 at 7:33 PM
“In The Cafe Of Lost Youth reads like the oral history of an au courant underground scene. Set in 1950s Paris, it could just as well be downtown NYC in the 1980s or any local bohemian place and time of your choosing.”
markcoleman57.medium.com/silver-summe...
markcoleman57.medium.com/silver-summe...
Businessmen in Brooks Brothers suits and silk-stockinged ladies strolled the same sidewalks as street kids in sweatsuits toting boomboxes or Mohawked punks in black leather and jeans. They only collided occasionally.
markcoleman57.medium.com/my-im-modest...
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
December 21, 2025 at 7:33 PM
Businessmen in Brooks Brothers suits and silk-stockinged ladies strolled the same sidewalks as street kids in sweatsuits toting boomboxes or Mohawked punks in black leather and jeans. They only collided occasionally.
markcoleman57.medium.com/my-im-modest...
markcoleman57.medium.com/my-im-modest...
Appropriating abandoned couches, appliances and houseware from the city streets was apparently a New York thing: a hobby for some and others, a way of life.
markcoleman57.medium.com/the-prospect...
markcoleman57.medium.com/the-prospect...
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…
markcoleman57.medium.com
December 21, 2025 at 7:33 PM
Appropriating abandoned couches, appliances and houseware from the city streets was apparently a New York thing: a hobby for some and others, a way of life.
markcoleman57.medium.com/the-prospect...
markcoleman57.medium.com/the-prospect...
The Cincinnati Enquirer sports section ran a full page of letters denouncing me as a symbol of “what’s gone wrong with the permissive modern liberal era” and so on.
markcoleman57.medium.com/bicentennial...
markcoleman57.medium.com/bicentennial...
Bicentennial Bust: How I (Barely) Survived Catholic High School
Front entrance to St Xavier High School Cincinnati, Ohio, sometime in the 20th Century
markcoleman57.medium.com
December 21, 2025 at 7:33 PM
The Cincinnati Enquirer sports section ran a full page of letters denouncing me as a symbol of “what’s gone wrong with the permissive modern liberal era” and so on.
markcoleman57.medium.com/bicentennial...
markcoleman57.medium.com/bicentennial...
my 2025 hit parade beginning with a belated look at the beguiling, scuzzy world of late author Gary Indiana markcoleman57.medium.com/against-nost...
AGAINST NOSTALGIA: Gary Indiana’s Unsentimental Journey
Author Gary Indiana in 1989, photo by Robert Mapplethorpe
markcoleman57.medium.com
December 21, 2025 at 7:33 PM
my 2025 hit parade beginning with a belated look at the beguiling, scuzzy world of late author Gary Indiana markcoleman57.medium.com/against-nost...
This superb overview of Susan Sontag’s life and career reminded me of Norman Mailer. They both blended talent, ambition and persona in bids to rule over the literary scene in a way that wouldn’t be possible today.
open.substack.com/pub/agoodhar...
open.substack.com/pub/agoodhar...
Runaround Sue
The life and afterlife of Susan Sontag
open.substack.com
December 19, 2025 at 3:06 PM
This superb overview of Susan Sontag’s life and career reminded me of Norman Mailer. They both blended talent, ambition and persona in bids to rule over the literary scene in a way that wouldn’t be possible today.
open.substack.com/pub/agoodhar...
open.substack.com/pub/agoodhar...
From behind the (unintentional) paywall, my essay on Nobel Prize winning French novelist Patrick Modiano and the idea of a "silver summer" - the supercharged period in young adulthood that can inform, and haunt, the rest of your life.
markcoleman57.medium.com/silver-summe...
markcoleman57.medium.com/silver-summe...
Silver Summer: Exhuming the Buried Legacy of Lost Youth in 5 Novels by Patrick Modiano
“Sometimes you remember certain episodes of your life and you need proof that you haven’t dreamed them.”
markcoleman57.medium.com
December 11, 2025 at 10:57 PM
From behind the (unintentional) paywall, my essay on Nobel Prize winning French novelist Patrick Modiano and the idea of a "silver summer" - the supercharged period in young adulthood that can inform, and haunt, the rest of your life.
markcoleman57.medium.com/silver-summe...
markcoleman57.medium.com/silver-summe...
Escape at Dannemora was terrific, and terrifying, felt like *I* was locked up, Patricia Arquette was frighteningly good
December 4, 2025 at 11:38 PM
Escape at Dannemora was terrific, and terrifying, felt like *I* was locked up, Patricia Arquette was frighteningly good
Fifty years later, I understand myself as a teenager *shrugs* better late than never
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v3...
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v3...
Adam Phillips · In Praise of Difficult Children
It isn’t simply that rules are made to be broken: the rules tell you that there is something to break. If there was no...
www.lrb.co.uk
December 3, 2025 at 2:28 AM
Fifty years later, I understand myself as a teenager *shrugs* better late than never
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v3...
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v3...
“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...
JG Ballard, Incredibly Strange Film, Incredibly Strange Music and Pranks all opened me up to brave new worlds
November 26, 2025 at 3:04 PM
JG Ballard, Incredibly Strange Film, Incredibly Strange Music and Pranks all opened me up to brave new worlds
“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...
