Essays: CV for download
“Nothing Is Strange: A Trip to Murakami’s Jazz Club.” Harper’s
“Driving the San Joaquin Valley An Afternoon with Starbucks Customers in the Armpit of California.” Harper’s
“Lunch at the Robot Grill: What Japan’s Automats Portend for American Restaurant Chains.” Harper’s
“Writing With Miles Davis.” The New York Times
“Three Feet by Six Feet by Three Feet: A Visit the Granddaddy of Japan’s Capsule Hotels.” The Morning News
“The Accidental Actor: Sneaking onto a TV Shoot.” The Morning News
“The Hollywood Subway: Against the Horizontal City.” Paris Review
“Pleasure Domes with Parking.” Paris Review
“At The Gettin’ Place.” Paris Review
“House-sitting and Other Work.” Paris Review
“The Burden of Home.” Paris Review
“Elegy for Lee Morgan.” Paris Review
“Jimmy Smith and the Allure of the Vault.” The Threepenny Review
“\’ra-di-kəl\.” Hotel Amerika
“This Is.” Kenyon Review
“Come Hear My Song: A Night at the San Joaquin Valley’s Last Historic Honky-Tonk.” Longreads
“At the Piano: Remembering Lorraine Geller and Portland’s Jazz History.” Michigan Quarterly Review
“Jazz Fiction and Reality: The Bright Comet of Wardell Gray.” Michigan Quarterly Review
“The Lost Footage of Pianist Sonny Clark.” Michigan Quarterly Review
“Sugar, Sugar: A Highly Selective Songbook About Sweets.” Slate
“A Day Spent Eating Nothing But Dark Chocolate.” Men’s Health
“A Pilgrimage to the Vanishing Streets of My Grandmother’s Lower East Side.” Tablet
“For Tokyo’s Best Food, Go Downstairs.” Saveur
“Lost & Found: Leonard Gardner’s novel Fat City.” Tin House
“All the Lost, Autobiographical Novels.” Zyzzyva
“The Stigma of Synth: My Secret Life With Depeche Mode.” Gawker
“Promotional Copy: Cute Eats Cute.” The Believer
“I Eat Burritos: Confessions of a Burrito Monomaniac.’ Portland Mercury
“Records of You.” The Rumpus
“What Is and What Could Be: Hank Mobley.” Conjunctions
“When It Was New: Miles Davis’ ‘So What.’” AGNI
“The Real Man Behind the Fancy Frames.” The New York Times
“Choice Cuts: Chicken-Themed 45rpm Records.” Gastronomica
“Selling on the Street.” Tin House
“The Business of Tracking Lit Mag Submissions.” Tin House
“Lost & Found: Donald Richie’s The Inland Sea.” Tin House
“Heart of Sadness: What Makes Sad Sentences Sad?” Missouri Review
“The Joy Is In The Struggle of Making: How Writers Get Their Ideas.” Green Mountains Review
“Searching for Literary Sasquatch, the Elusive Narrative Voice.” The Collagist
“The Thinking Man’s Filter.” The Rumpus (Republished in Russian magazine InoSMI.ru)
“American Thrift Store: A Photo Essay.” Hobart
“The Original House of Pies: SoCal Comfort Food.” Paris Review
“World Around Us: The Shack-Up Inn.” The Lifted Brow and Carry On
“A Reckless Autonomy.” The Smart Set
“The Stoned Age.” The Normal School (Republished as an eBook by Thought Catalog)
“P-town Diary: Book Affairs.” Portland Monthly
Articles:
“The Man at the End of the Line.” Narratively
“Dinner with the Ferret People.” Vice
“Don’t Worry ’Bout Me: The Brief Career and Self-Imposed Exile of Jutta Hipp, Jazz Pianist.” Apology
“Cameron’s Books and the Used Magazine Trade.” Virginia Quarterly Review
“The King Eddy Saloon and the Issue of Authenticity.” Virginia Quarterly Review
“All the Requisite Billies: The Untold Legend of Dex Romweber.” Oxford American
“Artists Who Play Music: In Conversation with Shannon Shaw, Greer McGettrick and Hannah Lew.” The Believer
“Reverb 10,000: How Two of the Best Surf Instrumental 45s of the 1990s Were Recorded in a Sacramento Bean Sprout Factory.” Medium and Yeti
“Rob Vasquez: One of the Northwest’s Most Talented and Unknown Rock & Roll Guitarists.”
“Unraveling the Mystery of The Macs.” Flavorwire
“Korean Snack Foods: A Tour.” The Awl
“Meat Puppets: On Your Feet.” Harp
“For Pages and Pages: Truth and the Olympian Quotations of Joseph Mitchell.”
“Asked & Answered: Sean Patrick Maylone.” T: The New York Times Style Magazine
“Practical Writer: The Truth About Literary Nepotism.” Poets & Writers
Book Reviews & Short Fiction:
Review of Robert Gordon’s Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion. Los Angeles Review of Books
Review of Donald Fagen’s Eminent Hipsters. New York Observer
Review of Nick Flynn’s The Reenactments. Portland Mercury
Review of John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead: Essays. Portland Mercury
Excerpt from my novel, “Run Chicken Run.” storySouth
Hi Aaron!
I have been giving your essay on Davis’ Kind of Blue as a resource for my “Critical listening skills” students to prepare to listen to “So what”, but it seems it is not available anymore through AGNI site. I was wondering if you would be so kind of sending a pdf of it to me or linking it directly to your blog.
Thanks!
Hi Perfecto,
What a honor to hear that my essay is useful to your students in this way. I’m thrilled! Fortunately, my essay is still available at AGNI, just at their new site https://agnionline.bu.edu/essay/when-it-was-new-miles-daviss-so-what
Hope that let’s you keep on teaching what you’re teaching. Let me know if you’d ever like me to Skype in to class to answer students’ questions or anything writing, and listening, related.
Cheers,
Aaron
Thanks for your kind and prompt answer, Aaron. My apologies for not being able to find your essay at AGNI. In any case, finding your website has also been a source for other interesting readings.
Cheers.
Hi Aaron. I am a lifelong lover of jazz, so thank you for your Reading List on Longreads, and I have just bought your book of essays, all of which will help me gain further depth on the subject. Good to have discovered your writings. Btw have you ever read ‘Beneath The Underdog’ by Charles Mingus?
Hi Tim, thanks so much for letting me know you enjoyed my reading list, and I appreciate you buying my jazz book! I hope you enjoy it. I have a few more jazz essays in the pipeline. Yes, I dug Mingus’ book. It was heavy. It’s always nice to meet another longtime jazz listener. Cheers!