I read and re-read many books in my adolescence. The Wanderers, for the sex; The White Hotel, also for the sex; and To Kill A Mockingbird, for the lyricism. Well-thumbed, too, was an anthology of essays, reported stories, interviews and cartoons from The Realist, a funny, scathing counter-culture magazine founded in 1958, by Paul Krassner. I didn't understand a lot of it; the "impolite" interview with Dick Gregory; the parody of William Manchester's biography on the John F. Kennedy assassination, in which LBJ has his way with Kennedy's corpse; the famously dirty Disney cartoon—but I knew, even in my ignorance, that it was funny.
-The Awl
