Author's Note | xi |
Cast of Characters | xiii |
Timeline | xxix |
Introduction | 1 |
1955-1970: "The writing came from the world itself" |
Chapter 1 "We wanted a certain kind of newspaper" | 9 |
Chapter 2 "We were amazed with how many writers walked into the Voice" | 14 |
Chapter 3 Quickly: A Column for Slow Readers | 19 |
Chapter 4 "He practically invented Off-Broadway theater" | 23 |
Chapter 5 "The Voice was her weapon" | 26 |
Chapter 6 "Just the fact that it was the '60s helped the Voice" | 31 |
Chapter 7 "Jack Newfield really wrote about the things that he believed in" | 41 |
Chapter 8 "What he was doing was very important for cinema and for the arts" | 46 |
Chapter 9 "Is this obscene?" | 54 |
Chapter 10 "I call him the first rock critic" | 58 |
Chapter 11 "We were the hippie generation" | 65 |
Chapter 12 "I was shocked by what I saw there" | 73 |
Chapter 13 "I sure hope those people get their rights" | 76 |
Chapter 14 Running Scared | 85 |
Chapter 15 "Carter buying the paper didn't seem like a big deal" | 91 |
1970-1980: "There was a palace revolution" |
Chapter 16 "Holy Mother Ireland. It's the women's liberation movement" | 97 |
Chapter 17 "She was a woman talking from inside her mind" | 108 |
Chapter 18 "Clay Felker was a celebrity fucker" | 114 |
Chapter 19 "I was a little bit intimidated by Karen Durbin" | 118 |
Chapter 20 "We're against gentrification, and we're for fist-fucking" | 122 |
Chapter 21 "The music section was suddenly in flower" | 130 |
Chapter 22 "A sitting state supreme court justice read the decision and broke down and cried" | 142 |
Chapter 23 "We started writing what they call the New Journalism" | 146 |
Chapter 24 "The Village Voice is an apocalyptic publication" | 150 |
Chapter 25 "You knew that the city was going to erupt" | 161 |
Chapter 26 "The feuds between Sarris and Kael are legendary" | 164 |
Chapter 27 "How do you deal with hostility?" | 170 |
Chapter 28 "We're very happy to give this to you, but please don't publicize this" | 178 |
Chapter 29 "You should check out this young guy Donald Trump" | 187 |
Chapter 30 "You're hiring all these Stalinist feminists" | 193 |
Chapter 31 "I'm the greatest pimp since Duke Ellington" | 198 |
Chapter 32 "The Obies are the only awards with integrity" | 205 |
Chapter 33 "They thought the gays were taking over the Voice" | 210 |
1980-1990: "This is the dark secret that they never talk about" |
Chapter 34 "One African American staffer in the editorial department-that's unacceptable" | 219 |
Chapter 35 "They called it graffiti" | 224 |
Chapter 36 "There's some music coming out of the Bronx called rap" | 230 |
Chapter 37 "Greg was a fully formed genius" | 234 |
Chapter 38 "The editors and writers were always going into his office and yelling at him" | 238 |
Chapter 39 "They demanded that they take our Pulitzer away" | 243 |
Chapter 40 "We were like a kumquat" | 247 |
Chapter 41 "Certain deaths hit really hard" | 256 |
Chapter 42 "We had a bomb scare once a month" | 260 |
Chapter 43 "You must be Wayne Barrett" | 266 |
Chapter 44 "I had a shoot-out with Nat Hentoff on the abortion issue" | 272 |
Chapter 45 La Dolce Musto | 275 |
Chapter 46 "I'm going to sell the paper to someone worse than me" | 284 |
Chapter 47 "Those people at the Village Voice, they're animals" | 293 |
Chapter 48 "Joe and I vowed that we would never go to a revolution that didn't have a swim-up bar" | 297 |
Chapter 49 "L'affaire Karen Finley!" | 301 |
Chapter 50 "A core of Black writers and editors began to build up" | 309 |
Chapter 51 "Hiphop Nation" | 315 |
Chapter 52 "Stanley was just red-eyed and ready to go" | 320 |
Chapter 53 "Do you wanna know about a really big fight that happened in the theater section?" | 326 |
Chapter 54 "The Voice Literary Supplement crossed pop culture and high culture" | 330 |
Chapter 55 "We were filled with grief" | 336 |
Chapter 56 "Christgau was hated by bands because he was so honest" | 349 |
Chapter 57 "I got the sense I was almost being hired as an undertaker" | 355 |
Chapter 58 "My goal was to make the Voice look like the New York Post on acid and run by communists" | 359 |
Chapter 59 "We wanted to do things that were more global" | 365 |
Chapter 60 "When the Tompkins Square riot hit, it was like somebody put a match to the flame" | 370 |
Chapter 61 Do the Right Thing | 376 |
Chapter 62 "The Central Park Five case was a big wake-up call" | 384 |
1990-2000: "There was some sort of cultural shift that we didn't understand" |
Chapter 63 "The culture that we championed became part of the mainstream" | 395 |
Chapter 64 "The art world is so peculiar" | 398 |
Chapter 65 "Independent films were coming into their own during the '90s" | 403 |
Chapter 66 "I've always called it BAJ, Black advocacy journalism" | 409 |
Chapter 67 "Wayne was the first guy who wrote a biography of Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani" | 415 |
Chapter 68 "I was very ignorant about trans people" | 421 |
Chapter 69 "We were the brats who were kicking them in the shins every week" | 425 |
Chapter 70 "Things got a little weird when Karen became editor in chief" | 432 |
Chapter 71 "Hammer, Drano, a pillow" | 437 |
Chapter 72 "It's like herding ocelots who are also attacking you" | 444 |
Chapter 73 "Wicked Don Forst" | 447 |
Chapter 74 "You should go do something big" | 455 |
Chapter 75 "What's Craigslist?" | 463 |
2000-2023: "Wish You Were Here" |
Chapter 76 "I'm from the internet, and the internet is coming!" | 469 |
Chapter 77 "Stop the presses!" | 473 |
Chapter 78 "You are choosing the winners!" | 480 |
Chapter 79 "We have to utilize the web to stay relevant" | 483 |
Chapter 80 "Slut Boy" | 489 |
Chapter 81 "They had complete contempt for the paper" | 493 |
Chapter 82 "The inmates were running the institution" | 498 |
Chapter 83 "Donald Trump said yes!" | 501 |
Chapter 84 "They love firing people" | 504 |
Chapter 85 "If the National Organization of Women calls, just fucking hang up on them" | 513 |
Chapter 86 "It wasn't my Village Voice anymore" | 519 |
Chapter 87 "Wayne couldn't believe that Trump was winning" | 522 |
Chapter 88 "The Voice can bring to bear a history" | 527 |
Afterword | 529 |
Acknowledgments | 531 |
Bibliography | 535 |
Index | 545 |