Asphalt is a dystopian novel of speculative fiction by American writer Carl Hancock Rux and published by Atria/Simon & Schuster in 2004. The novel was completed while Rux was briefly in residence at the famed Chelsea Hotel in New York City. [1]
Asphalt is a dystopian novel of speculative fiction by American writer Carl Hancock Rux and published by Atria/Simon & Schuster in 2004. The novel was completed while Rux was briefly in residence at the famed Chelsea Hotel in New York City. [1]
Racine, an expatriate DJ, returns from an ill-fated stay in Paris to a war-torn New York City and finds himself lodged in a deteriorating civil war era brownstone mansion in a Brooklyn neighborhood devastated by poverty and despair. [2] Here he meets Manny, a crossdressing free spirit with a penchant for women and architectural history; Mawepi the stout bouncer and translator for the clairvoyant yet reclusive Holy Mother Lucinda; and Couchette, an emotionally scarred erotic dancer mired in denial regarding her famous jazz musician father's suicide. Immediately Racine finds himself creating the sonic backdrop for intense parties, orgies, and conversations while Manny and the other residents chase their dreams in a transitional New York. Couchette is the troubled spirit with whom Racine shares physically intimate and emotionally frustrating moments. The story weaves depictions of Racine's childhood, including his mother's death by fire when he was an infant; his experiences living with his brother, Frederick, in the custody of an uncle who is a disturbed religious zealot; Frederick's mysterious accidental death; Racine's eventual abandonment and years in foster care under the guardianship of a caring alcoholic; and the truth of his recent trip to France to visit a former schoolmate, Benoit, and his girlfriend. Rux infuses his tale with Greek mythology, mirroring Racine's tragic life experiences with that of Euripides' Hippolytus who is physically dismembered by a monstrous force on his journey to redemption. The characters in Asphalt all employ different strategies for abandoning experiences that have consumed and distorted their views of reality and their conflict with memory and poses a rhetorical embedded question in abandoned buildings and the psychological aftereffects of war-torn cities as to how cultures and individuals handle suffering, loss, and unresolved tragedy.
Antonio "Tony" Montana is a fictional character and the villain protagonist of the 1983 film Scarface. This character is portrayed by Al Pacino in the film and is voiced by André Sogliuzzo in the 2006 video game Scarface: The World Is Yours. Embodying the possibility of a person rising from the bottom of society to the top, Tony Montana has become a cultural icon, as well as one of the most iconic film characters of all time.
Vasily Semyonovich Grossman was a Soviet writer and journalist. Born to a Jewish family in Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, Grossman trained as a chemical engineer at Moscow State University, earning the nickname Vasya-khimik because of his diligence as a student. Upon graduation, he took a job in Stalino in the Donets Basin. In the 1930s he changed careers and began writing full-time, publishing a number of short stories and several novels.
Once Were Warriors is New Zealand author Alan Duff's bestselling first novel, published in 1990. It tells the story of an urban Māori family, the Hekes, and portrays the reality of domestic violence in New Zealand. It was the basis of a 1994 film of the same title, directed by Lee Tamahori and starring Rena Owen and Temuera Morrison, which made its U.S. premiere at the Hawaii International Film Festival. The novel was followed by two sequels, What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? (1996) and Jake's Long Shadow (2002).
Peter Llewelyn Davies was the middle of five sons of Arthur and Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, one of the Llewelyn Davies boys befriended and later informally adopted by J. M. Barrie. Barrie publicly identified him as the source of the name for the title character in his 1904 play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up.
Jason's Lyric is a 1994 American erotic romantic psychological drama film, written by Bobby Smith Jr., directed by Doug McHenry, who co-produced the film with George Jackson and Marilla Lane Ross, and starring Allen Payne, Jada Pinkett, Bokeem Woodbine, Treach, Eddie Griffin, Lahmard Tate, Lisa Nicole Carson, and Forest Whitaker. Set in Third Ward, Houston, Texas, the story is about two mentally scarred brothers who choose different paths in dealing with their tragic childhood. When the older brother found love, he starts facing tough choices: continue to feel family responsibility for his younger brother, or follow his heart to be with his girlfriend.
Carl Hancock Rux is an American writer and multidisciplinary artist, historian and social activist. The author of a collection of poetry, Pagan Operetta, a novel, Asphalt and the play Talk. Rux has been published as a contributing writer in numerous journals, catalogs, anthologies, and magazines including Interview magazine, Essence magazine, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Iké Udé's aRude Magazine, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art and American Theatre (magazine), among others. Rux's writings and monographs on visual art include essays on the work of conceptual artist Glenn Ligon ; the introduction for Nick Cave’s Until; and the Guggenheim Museum’s Carrie Mae Weems retrospective.
Keepers is a 2005 novel by American writer Gary A. Braunbeck. It was nominated for a 2005 Bram Stoker Award for "Superior Achievement in a Novel."
André Téchiné is a French screenwriter and film director. He has a long and distinguished career that places him among the most accomplished post-New Wave French film directors.
Koko is a horror-mystery novel by American writer Peter Straub, first published in the United States in 1988 by EP Dutton, and in Great Britain by Viking. It was the winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1989.
Pagan Operetta (1998) is a collection of poetry and experimental prose by Carl Hancock Rux, his first poetry collection. It won the 1999 Village Voice Literary Prize. Rux subsequently adapted one section for stage performance, initially also under the title Pagan Operetta, later as The No Black Male Show.
The Hancock Manor was a house located at 30 Beacon Street on Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts. It stood near the southwest corner of what are today the grounds of the Massachusetts State House. It was the home of United States Founding Father John Hancock.
Possessing the Secret of Joy is a 1992 novel by Alice Walker.
Kenworthy Hall, also known as the Carlisle-Martin House, Carlisle Hall and Edward Kenworthy Carlisle House, is a plantation house located on the north side of Alabama Highway 14, two miles west of the Marion courthouse square. It was built from 1858 to 1860 and is one of the best preserved examples of Richard Upjohn's distinctive asymmetrical Italian villa style. It is the only surviving residential example of Upjohn's Italian villa style that was especially designed to suit the Southern climate and the plantation lifestyle. It has a massive four-story tower, windows of variable size and shape with brownstone trim, and a distinctly Southern division of family and public spaces. The building was designed and constructed for Edward Kenworthy Carlisle as his primary family residence and the centerpiece of his 440-acre (1.8 km2) estate. It, along with some of its surrounding ancillary structures, was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2004. The house and a purported ghost are featured as a short story in Kathryn Tucker Windham's 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey.
Sticks and Bones is a television film adapted from the Tony Award-winning play of the same title by David Rabe. The black comedy focuses on David, a blind Vietnam War veteran who finds himself unable to come to terms with his actions on the battlefield and alienated from his family because they neither can accept his disability nor understand his wartime experience. Rabe explores the conflicted feelings of many civilians during the era by parodying the ideal American family as it was portrayed on the television sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Beneath the perfect facade of the playwright's fictional Nelson family are layers of prejudice, bigotry, and self-hatred that are peeled away slowly as they interact with their physically and emotionally damaged son and brother.
Angelo My Love is a 1983 American drama film directed by Robert Duvall and starring Angelo Evans. The screenplay is about New York City Romani people. It was screened out of competition at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival.
A Cruel God Reigns is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Moto Hagio. It was originally serialized in the manga magazine Petit Flower from 1992 to 2001, and published as seventeen tankōbon volumes by Shogakukan. The series follows Jeremy Butler, a teenage boy who murders his physically and sexually abusive stepfather. In 1997, A Cruel God Reigns was recognized with the inaugural Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize Award for Excellence.
Talk is a play written by Carl Hancock Rux, commissioned and premiered by The Foundry Theatre at the Joseph Papp Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival in 2002. The play was directed by Marion McClinton, with costumes by Toni-Leslie James.
A Quiet Place in the Country is a 1968 giallo thriller film directed by Elio Petri, and starring Franco Nero and Vanessa Redgrave. Based on the short story "The Beckoning Fair One" by Oliver Onions, its plot follows an artist who relocates to a rural villa with his girlfriend, where he begins to experience increasingly terrifying, apparently supernatural events.
The Dancing Detective is a 1946 short story collection by American crime writer Cornell Woolrich under the pseudonym William Irish. It comprises eight short stories all revolving around Woolrich's trademark themes of suspense, detection, horror and macabre irony.
The Incendiaries is a 2018 novel by South Korean–born American author R. O. Kwon, published by Riverhead Books. The novel was inspired by Kwon's own loss of faith in God at the age of 17, and it took her 10 years to finish.