The Big Fellow and The Cardinal
No one quite expected what would happen on January 16, 1920 or in the thirteen years between then and the repeal of the amendment. Prohibition was generally supported when it began, as it was believed that it would improve society and lower crime.
Organized crime exploded in the era. Ordinary people ran moonshine operations, while gangsters were seen by more and more people as Robin Hood-esque figures. The government had taken away alcohol, and the gangsters were bringing it back. And the high profile criminals – especially ones that didn’t have good police connections – needed a place to hide from time to time. St. Paul was the perfect place.
Robert O’Connor tells of how St. Paul became a criminal haven.
Beats, bums, bohemians
Later this year, provincial stalwarts Five Leaves Press retreat to the dark alleyways of the capital to bring out three new reprinted New London Editions as the ‘Beats, bums, bohemians’ series: Adrift in Soho by Colin Wilson (above), The Furnished Room by Laura Del-Rivo and Baron’s Court, All Change by Terry Taylor. There’s no covers […]
Three Poems
Leave your family groundswell and dig in with us like
ash birds slurring vocabularies of trees…
and the lake near the woods sprays us all
like it’s another joke of a lonesome lighthouse
the awkward prone parts of sleeping America
wedged in our dark paneling…
I won’t rake leaves as they’re the cheap mobiles that remind me
of the stems that climb stars like leaves
and cages of trees also are bassinettes on wheels
rolling down cold sand dunes faster and faster and
won’t dare tell me I don’t follow them
By Russell Jaffe.
A pile of paper covered with wrong words
Via Five Dials, a telegram from Dorothy Parker that is in keeping with Tom Gauld’s cartoon depiction of the author.
3:AM Cult Hero: Thomas Chatterton
“I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy, The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride.” Before J.T. Leroy there was 18th century plagiarist poet Thomas Chatterton, subject of Peter Ackroyd‘s excellent 1987 novel and posterboy for Tate Britain’s current Romantics exhibition (pictured above). Quite fittingly, that isn’t him in Henry Wallis’ painting, instead it is […]