Thanatomania

A new book and an old movie. Both about death. The desire for death. And, naturally, the Rolling Stones.



Sway, by Zachary Lazar, is about the late-Sixties confluence of the Stones, Charles Manson, and Kenneth Anger. A strange story by a writer with a very visual style, it could have been better, but is worth reading anyway.



Performance, on the other hand, could not be better. With Jagger, James Fox, and Anita Pallenberg - who figures prominently in Sway - it’s life as it should be: a total fucking fog.

But foggy or not, I’ve got a bad feeling these days, and not just from the art. There are a lot of people in this country who are no more prepared for change now than they were in 1968. The next few months might be hard to watch.