The Freaks Came Out to Write
The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture
You either were there or you wanted to be. A defining New York City institution co-founded by Norman Mailer, The Village Voice was the first newspaper to cover hip-hop, the avant-garde art scene, and Off-Broadway with gravitas. It reported on the AIDS crisis with urgency and seriousness when other papers dismissed it as a gay disease. In 1979, the Voice’s Wayne Barrett uncovered Donald Trump as a corrupt con artist before anyone else was paying attention. It invented new forms of criticism and storytelling and revolutionized journalism, spawning hundreds of copycats.
With more than 200 interviews, including two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Colson Whitehead, cultural critic Greg Tate, gossip columnist Michael Musto, and feminist writers Vivian Gornick and Susan Brownmiller, former Voice writer Tricia Romano pays homage to the paper that saved NYC landmarks from destruction and exposed corrupt landlords and judges. With interviews featuring post-punk band, Blondie, sportscaster Bob Costas, and drummer Max Weinberg, of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, in this definitive oral history, Romano tells the story of journalism, New York City and American culture—and the most famous alt-weekly of all time.
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Release date
February 27, 2024 -
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781541736405
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781541736405
- File size: 11945 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Publisher's Weekly
Starred review from November 27, 2023
Former Village Voice nightlife columnist Romano debuts with a phenomenal oral history of the alternative weekly from its founding in 1955 through the 2018 shutdown of editorial operations. Drawing on more than 200 interviews with Voice personnel, Romano explores the many vibrant personalities, colorful stories, and heated disputes that defined the publication. Founding editor-in-chief Dan Wolf is remembered for championing young writers who “were actually living what byline was about,” and cultural critic Greg Tate comes across as an erudite polymath whom features editor Lisa Kennedy credits for opening up “an incredible space for people to imagine writing whatever the fuck they wanted.” There’s no shortage of drama, such as when short-tempered jazz critic Stanley Crouch punched music writer Harry Allen over Allen’s defense of hip-hop (“In the interest of talking against the promotion of thuggish behavior, I smacked him,” Crouch says). Romano is unafraid to cast a critical eye, devoting a devastating chapter to the Voice’s scant early coverage of the AIDS epidemic; editor Richard Goldstein recalls that “there was a reluctance on the part of people to do something that was so negative about sex.” Brimming with riveting anecdotes and capturing its subject’s rollicking spirit, this is a remarkable portrait of the “nation’s first alternative newspaper.” Photos. Agent: Betsy Lerner, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner. -
Kirkus
December 1, 2023
A chronicle of a famed publication. Journalist Romano makes a zesty book debut with a polyphonic oral history of the iconic Village Voice. Drawing from more than 200 interviews with writers, editors, photographers, proofreaders, interns, critics, artists, and activists, the author tells the story of the feisty newspaper, founded in 1955 by journalist Dan Wolf, psychologist Ed Fancher, and novelist Norman Mailer, to offer a forum for independent reporting. "Our philosophy," said Richard Goldstein, who served as editor, "was you do not hire an expert; you hire someone who is living through the phenomenon worth covering." Poets were hired as poetry critics, dancers as dance critics; Jules Feiffer became the resident cartoonist. From the outset, the Voice celebrated and encouraged personal journalism on issues that mattered to Greenwich Village and beyond, including civil rights, off-Broadway theater, jazz clubs, hip-hop, AIDS, gay activism, the women's movement, and independent films. Former editor Joe Levy notes that it "that took things seriously--small things, developing things, emerging things--that other places didn't." As Yippies co-founder Jim Fouratt comments, "At its very peak--the '60s, '70s, '80s--the Village Voice was the go-to place to find out what was happening in music, film, local politics, national politics, books, what was happening in the art world. The Voice had the cultural elite." Romano's interviewees reveal internal squabbles and rivalries, as well as changes resulting from a succession of owners: wealthy man-about-town Carter Burden, New York magazine founder Clay Felker, irascible mogul Rupert Murdoch, New Times Media, and billionaire Peter Barbey. "The Village Voice is an apocalyptic publication," one writer opined; "every four or five years they have another apocalypse." Now only an online publication, the Voice, Romano asserts, is evidence of a void in journalism created by "greedy, imperious, and/or incompetent and negligent management." Eyewitness testimony makes for a vibrant media history.COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Library Journal
January 1, 2024
When readers see the name of the NYC newspaper the Village Voice, they may instantly recall its radical and important journalistic coverage of some of the most important issues of the day, such as the Vietnam War, civil rights, the AIDS crisis, and 9/11. Romano interned and worked at the Voice for eight years. Her book is an absorbing firsthand history of the publication, recounting its history and cast of characters (from Mailer to Musto to Dash), either through their writings or the more than 200 interviews Romano conducted. Chapters about each era of the Voice are short, and there is little analysis. Instead, readers are left to interpret the vibe and meaning of those periods of Voice history. VERDICT An exceptional resource in which readers get a real flavor of the exciting and troubling times throughout the Village Voice's run and the opportunity to draw their own conclusions about its rise (and fall in 2017). Recommended for academic libraries and comprehensive journalism collections.--Maria Ashton-Stebbings
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Formats
- OverDrive Read
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- English
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