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      Francis Davis, Sharp-Eared Jazz Critic and Husband of Terry Gross, Dies at 78

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      He wrote prolifically about various aspects of the arts and popular culture. But he kept his focus on jazz, celebrating its past while worrying about its future.Francis Davis, a prolific jazz critic with a sharp eye and ear for music’s cultural context, died on Monday at his home in Philadelphia. He was 78.His wife, Terry Gross, the host of the NPR program “Fresh Air,” said the cause was emphysema and complications of Parkinson’s disease.As a contributing editor at The Atlantic for more than a quarter-century and a columnist at The Village Voice for even longer, Mr. Davis wrote hundreds of articles on music, film, television and popular culture, focusing on jazz — an art form he both celebrated and bemoaned, worried that its future would not live up to its past. (He also wrote for The New York Times and other publications.)His specialty was teasing meaning from the sounds he heard, situating them in America’s history, culture and society. That approach, and the fluency of his writing, made him one of the most influential writers on jazz in the 1980s and beyond, drawing a wide readership and praise from other critics. The cultural figures and artifacts he took on — Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, “Seinfeld,” Billie Holiday, the director William Wyler — amount to a group portrait of America in the postwar years, largely in the pages of The Atlantic.One reviewer wrote of “Jazz and Its Discontents” (2004), one of seven books Mr. Davis published, that his “insights, investigations and opinions” were “funny, fierce and fair.”Da Capo Press“He is a sensitive, knowledgeable, perceptive, imaginative critic, and even when he’s moping he’s a pleasure to read,” The Washington Post book critic Jonathan Yardley wrote of Mr. Davis’s 1990 collection, “Outcats: Jazz Composers, Instrumentalists, and Singers.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Overlooked No More: Ethel Lina White, Master of Suspense Who Inspired Hitchcock

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      A powerhouse of the genre, she published around 100 short stories and 17 novels, one of which was adapted into the acclaimed film “The Lady Vanishes.”This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.Before Alfred Hitchcock made his name in Hollywood, he turned to the work of the British suspense novelist Ethel Lina White.White was a powerhouse of the genre in the 1930s, publishing more than 100 short stories and 17 novels, three of which were adapted into films, most notably Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes” (1938). That movie, filmed in England, was named one of the top 100 films of the 20th century by the British Film Institute. It won Hitchcock the best director award from the New York Film Critics Circle — one of the few awards he would ever win for his directing — and it was the last film he made in England before he moved to Los Angeles.Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “The Lady Vanishes” (1938), about a woman’s search for another woman she meets on a train ride across Europe, was based on White’s book “The Wheel Spins.” Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, via LMPC/Getty Images“The Lady Vanishes” was based on White’s book “The Wheel Spins” (1936), a masterwork of horror and suspense that follows Iris Carr, an Englishwoman on holiday, who suffers a head injury before embarking on a train ride across Europe, where she engages in conversation with another Englishwoman, Miss Froy. When Miss Froy disappears, everyone on the train disavows any knowledge of the woman’s existence. “The Wheel Spins” cleverly puts the screws to poor Iris, teetering between sanity and madness as her continued investigations threaten to reveal an overarching conspiracy.By the time “The Wheel Spins” was published in 1936, White had already made her name in the mystery genre. “She took a style in its infancy and added so many threads of classical literature to it,” one scholar wrote.Collins Crime ClubWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tim Mohr, DJ and German Translator Who Ghostwrote Paul Stanley’s Memoir, Dies at 55

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      An American who had lived abroad, he sought out books by up-and-coming German writers, while ghostwriting memoirs for rock stars like Paul Stanley.Tim Mohr, an American who worked as a disc jockey and freelance writer in Berlin in the 1990s, diving deep into the city’s fervent post-Communist underground, before using his experiences to turn out sensitive, award-winning English translations of works by up-and-coming German writers, died on March 31 at his home in Brooklyn. He was 55.His wife, Erin Clarke, said the cause was pancreatic cancer.Mr. Mohr arrived in Germany in 1992 with a yearlong grant to teach English. He did not speak a word of German, so the program sent him to Berlin, a melting pot of cultures where English was often the second language.He stayed for six years. By day, he worked as a journalist for local English-language magazines, including the Berlin edition of Time Out; at night, he was a D.J. in the city’s ever-expanding club scene.He later remarked that his time spent traveling among Berlin’s many underground subcultures gave him a thorough education in a form of street German that set him up to work as a translator.One of his first major translation projects, in 2008, was “Feuchtgebiete” (“Wetlands”), a sexually explicit coming-of-age novel by Charlotte Roche packed with raunchy, idiomatic slang that only someone with Mr. Mohr’s background could render in English.“I read the book for the eventual U.S. publisher when they were considering buying the rights,” he told The Financial Times in 2012. “And I said to the editor, ‘You know, you’ll be hard pressed to find an academic translator who is as familiar with terminology related to anal sex as a former Berlin club D.J. is.’”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Is Yoko Ono Finally Getting Her Moment?

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      A new biography and film about Yoko Ono offer more opportunities to assess her contributions to culture. Two pop music critics debate if they’re worthy of their subject.LINDSAY ZOLADZ Are we living through a Yokossance? Though the 92-year-old conceptual artist, musician and Beatle widow Yoko Ono has spent much of the past decade far from the public eye dealing with health issues, each year seems to bring a new opportunity to reassess her contributions to culture.In the 2020s alone, there has been a tribute album, a small shelf’s worth of biographies and, just last year, a blockbuster, career-spanning show of her artwork at London’s Tate Modern. (That retrospective, “Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,” comes to Chicago in October.) All of that followed Peter Jackson’s long-awaited 2021 Beatles documentary “Get Back,” which reignited debates about Ono’s influence on the band she was unfairly accused of “breaking up.”David Sheff, a longtime friend of Ono’s who is best known for writing a memoir about his son’s struggles with addiction, “Beautiful Boy” (Ono gave him permission to title it after a John Lennon song), argues strongly against that assumption in his new biography, “Yoko.” He even takes it a step further, proposing that “it’s possible that the band stayed together longer than they would have because of Yoko,” since she gave Lennon several years of relative groundedness during which the Beatles made “Let It Be” and “Abbey Road.” “During the writing and recording of those albums, John had a foot out the door,” Sheff writes. “If he hadn’t had Yoko, the other foot might have followed sooner than it did.”We get extended glimpses of Ono and Lennon a few years later in “One to One: John & Yoko,” Kevin Macdonald’s forthcoming documentary that focuses on a well-told chapter of their story, their time living in New York City in the early 1970s.“Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,” on display in Germany last September. The retrospective comes to Chicago in October.Martin Meissner/Associated PressI’m curious, Jon: Did either Sheff’s biography or Macdonald’s film add anything to your understanding of Ono? I’m also thinking of an essay that our colleague Amanda Hess wrote in 2021 about Ono’s transfixing presence in “Get Back.” She said she had observed the slow evolution of Ono from “a cultural villain” into “a kind of folk hero.” Do you think that shift is now fully complete?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      Book Review: ‘Slayers, Every One of Us,’ by Kristin Russo and Jenny Owen Youngs

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      In a fizzy joint memoir, Jenny Owen Youngs and Kristin Russo capture what it was like to create a popular podcast for fellow superfans — and how they kept it going even after breaking up.SLAYERS, EVERY ONE OF US: How One Girl in All the World Showed Us How to Hold On, by Kristin Russo and Jenny Owen Youngs“The story you most often hear about divorce, about heartbreak, is the story of an ending. A light switch flicked into the Off position,” writes Jenny Owen Youngs in “Slayers, Every One of Us,” a memoir written with her ex-wife, Kristin Russo. “But what if you clicked the bulb back on?”Restoring the power is the dominant theme in their book, with that light source being the creative partnership the two achieved through their podcast about “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” even as their romantic partnership went dark five years after their 2013 marriage. The book is narrated by both women, with each providing her perspective on their shared history in alternating sections. Russo (a speaker, a consultant and an “Italian-born, Long Island-raised triple fire sign”) comes off as the more ebullient and emotional partner. Youngs (a musician and songwriter who has “always been a bit more grounded in reality”) is more sardonic and taciturn.Boom-and-bust romance memoirs are common, but mix in fervent fandom and original music and we’ve got ourselves a different approach to the well-trod ground here — all spurred on by a 1990s television show about a girl with superhuman strength fighting evil with help from her pals. (The book’s title comes from an inspirational speech, given by Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers, to a room full of young women in the final episode of the series: “I say my power should be our power. … Slayers, every one of us.”)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      10 Books Like ‘The White Lotus’ If You Can’t Wait for Next Season

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      From scathing satires of wealth to murder mysteries set at luxe resorts, these novels are sure to scratch that Mike White itch.Smart, funny and compulsively watchable, HBO’s “The White Lotus” is the rare TV satire that strikes a perfect balance between vicious and empathetic, skewering the superrich while also humanizing their often outlandish foibles. The series, which just wrapped up its third season, follows a formula that’s as familiar as it is addictive: A flock of wealthy, ill-mannered tourists descends on a far-flung luxury resort for one week, dreaming of escape — only to find that the very problems they hoped to flee are swiftly and mercilessly closing in on them, with deadly consequences.Part of the pleasure of the show is how it manages to make these doomed holidays seem so appealing. Lives implode, relationships crumble and people wind up dead, but you still want to be there regardless. If you’re not quite ready to check out of the White Lotus, we’ve got 10 novels that channel the spirit of the show, from ruthless depictions of moneyed vacationers to murder mysteries set at high-end resorts.If you want to open on a dead bodyKismetby Amina AkhtarMuch like the White Lotus in Thailand, Sedona, Ariz., has a reputation for spirituality that attracts all manner of gurus, yogis and so-called wellness aficionados. Their pretensions are witheringly lampooned in this comic thriller about Ronnie, a Pakistani American who tags along to the desert enclave with her friend turned life coach, Marley. It isn’t long before the dark side of paradise reveals itself, in the form of a dead body — the first of many that soon turn up in various states of dismemberment. Akhtar has a keen eye for the hypocrisy of the namaste-espousing elite, and no vampire facial, jar of manuka honey or hot yoga session is spared from her mordantly funny wit.The Hunting Partyby Lucy FoleyFlitting between the past and present, this mystery novel is more than a mere whodunit: Although the story begins with a murder, Foley conceals the identity of the victim, describing the body in vague terms before rewinding to the start of the week. The cast of this locked-room drama comprises nine 30-something friends from Oxford University who have assembled at a remote hunting lodge in the Scottish Highlands for their annual New Year’s Eve party. When a raging blizzard traps the group inside, secrets, lies and betrayals all bubble to the surface, and the question of who will die — and who will do the killing — becomes more and more intriguing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      John Peck, Underground Cartoonist Known as The Mad Peck, Dies at 82

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      Among many other accomplishments, he illustrated a scholarly work on the history of comic books and wrote record reviews in four-panel comic-strip form.John Peck, a cultural omnivore known as The Mad Peck whose dryly humorous style as an underground cartoonist, artist, critic, disc jockey and record collector was accompanied by an ornate eccentricity, died on March 15 in Providence, R.I. He was 82.The cause of his death, in a hospital, was a ruptured aneurysm in his aorta, said his sisters, Marie Peck and Lois Barber.Mr. Peck was not as well known or acclaimed as underground cartoonists like Robert Crumb or Art Spiegelman. That was perhaps in part because his interests were so broad, Gary Kenton, who edited him at Fusion and Creem magazines from the late 1960s into the ’70s, said in an interview.“To me, he would be a Top 10 cartoonist, a Top 10 D.J., a Top 10 rock critic,” Mr. Kenton said.Mr. Peck illustrated one of the first scholarly works on the importance of comic books. And he was perhaps the first cartoonist to write record reviews in four-panel comic-strip form.He also wrote an academic paper in 1983 with the literary commentator Michael Macrone about the evolution of television; its title, “How J.R. Got Out of the Air Force and What the Derricks Mean,” playfully referenced phallic symbolism in the oil-soaked prime-time soap opera “Dallas.” Mr. Peck once called it his “crowning achievement.”His comic-strip music critiques appeared in Fusion, Creem, Rolling Stone and other music publications, and in The Village Voice. He worked in a retro style repurposed from the 1940s and ’50s and wrote with sardonic humor (“Is There Life After Meatloaf?”), while offering trustworthy criticism.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What’s His Age Again? Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus (Now 53) Looks Back.

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      In early March, Mark Hoppus, the singer and bassist for the long-running pop-punk trio Blink-182, and his wife, Skye, were special guests at a Sotheby’s modern and contemporary art auction in London. The sale featured a piece from their collection, a rare Banksy titled “Crude Oil (Vettriano),” up alongside works by Yoshitomo Nara, Gerhard Richter and Vincent van Gogh.“It was such rarefied air that we’ve never been a part of before,” Hoppus recalled at his home a week later, outfitted in chunky black glasses, a Dinosaur Jr. long-sleeve T-shirt, navy blue Dickies and Gucci Mickey Mouse sneakers. The painting sold for nearly $5.5 million, part of which will go to charity.It would have been hard to predict such a highfalutin turn for Hoppus back in 1999, when Blink-182 released its magnum opus, “Enema of the State,” which catapulted the band to MTV “Total Request Live” stardom and sold five million copies domestically. The video for the album’s first single, the jocular “What’s My Age Again?,” famously features the band members running unclothed through the streets of Los Angeles. (“Naked dudes are so ridiculous,” Hoppus said. “It just looks comical to me.”) Blink-182 followed up that LP with its first No. 1 album, “Take Off Your Pants and Jacket,” two years later.Despite Blink-182’s reputation for high jinks, naughty puns and charmingly adolescent hits like “All the Small Things,” Hoppus is remarkably thoughtful in person. Jim Adkins, whose group, Jimmy Eat World, supported Blink-182 and Green Day on a 2002 tour, said in an interview that Hoppus exhibited “human empathy.”“I know ‘Mark from Blink-182 is emotionally mature’ might seem like an oxymoron if you don’t know him,” Adkins admitted, “but I would say that.”Blink-182, from left: Mark Hoppus, Travis Barker and Tom DeLonge in 1999.Lester Cohen/Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More