Bio Buff

  Noah Levine’s 2003 memoir, Dharma Punx , celebrates the authors two favorite subjects – Tibetan Buddhism and punk rock. After some youthful drugs, larceny, and general mayhem leading to a jail stint, Levine works to balance his attachment to punk with the spiritual teachings of his parents. In the most positive light, the story charts the author’s evolution from self-destructive, antisocial street kid to sober, self-reflective net contributor to society. A less flattering summary would be a self-righteous hippie-hating hoodlum’s journeys out of a blip of darkness to fulfill his destiny as self-righteous hippie-hating nepo baby Buddhist. Readers’ choice! Like many religions, Buddhism’s life-affirming precepts are often underpinned by dense, esoteric symbolism, complex liturgy in obscure languages and hundreds of years of internal debate amongst exalted masters. Levine excels at creating an engaging backstory which allows him to gently introduce Buddhist principles as a legitimat...

Before Night Falls is Reinaldo Arena’s swansong. Wrecked by AIDs in the deadly early wave, his committed suicide in 1990, three years prior to its publication. His truth doesn’t whisper so much as lash out, unapologetically loud in his views on fucking, politics and the politics of fucking. Arena’s condemnation of Castro is total. From early expectations for improvement over Baptista, the prospects of a communist utopia retreat unrealized. He argues it is the nature of fascism to suppresses sex, humor and beauty, because dictatorships are “prudish, pompous and utterly dreary.” For his attempts to dodge these mores through life and literature, Arena is sentenced to prison until such time as he renounces his most essential impulses. The author celebrated the fluidity of sex roles in Cuba prior to his departure. At the time, Arena explains, men routinely had sex with other men without censure for homosexuality unless they were the “passive” participant. He recounts, “I preferred to h...