Tom Waits Takes His Old Fans For a New Ride

Dmitry Kiper, a current fellow in the nonfiction program, reviews Tom Waits’ new album in The Brooklyn Rail: “Bums. Drunks. Prostitutes. Travelers. Nighthawks. Hustlers. Throughout the 1970s—under the spell of Jack Kerouac, Edward Hopper, and Charles Bukowski—Tom Waits told sad, comic tales of the down-and-out. He dressed in old, beat-up suits and lived a hard life—drinking and smoking excessively, hanging out with shady characters, and staying at the Tropicana, a seedy Los Angeles hotel he once described as being full of ‘transvestites, unemployed firemen…hookers, sadists…ex-bebop singers, and one-armed piano players.’ Read More