Janet, My Mother, and Me “We went out to Belmont, and Harry couldn’t stop picking winners. We went to the 21 Club for dinner, and we scalped tickets for a Broadway musical in the fourth ...
November 20, 2021
Journalist, critic, and memoirist, Thomas Larson is the author of three books: The Sanctuary of Illness: A Memoir of Heart Disease, The Saddest Music Ever Written: The Story of Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings," and The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative. He has been a staff writer for the San Diego Reader since 1999. He teaches in the MFA Program at Ashland University, Ashland, Ohio, where he also is the Book Reviews editor for River Teeth. He lectures on the craft of nonfiction writing, the memoir, music subjects, and his heart disease, and he facilitates writing workshops as well. His website is thomaslarson.com.
Articles by Thomas Larson
Nathanael West, Jim Thompson, Max Miller
Where do San Diego’s ex-Christians go?
Christianity in America is waning. In 2016, only 26 percent of weddings took place in a church, which seems to suggest that religious matters are becoming more peripheral to our social and economic life. The ...
September 1, 2021
The Hemet-San Diego State commute, bulldozing Mexicans out of central Escondido
Chinaberry Farm: Finding Home Half our belongings still packed in the barn, paths form a quotidian maze between stacked boxes. The house livable, anyway. A rat takes up residence in Cindy’s paintings stored in the ...
July 12, 2021
Jack Kemp and the fugitive, U.S. Grant's son, Seals ambivalent about Jesse Ventura
Kemp and the Fugitive Fotomat also gave Graham a political base. One of the first beneficiaries was Jack Kemp. On May 23, 1968, the San Diego Union reported that Kemp had “joined Fotomat Corp., La ...
July 5, 2021
San Diego stupid
Sign of the Times: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity by Carlo M. Cipolla, written and published privately in 1976 and reissued in April, is a sudden bestseller. Hardly unexpected, given the times. If you’ve ...
June 30, 2021
San Diego's worst white collar crime these days
White-collar criminals come in all sizes and styles, but they share a motive: to steal money. Anyone’s stash will do. According to the FBI, they are experts at “deceit, concealment, [and] violation of trust.” Of ...
May 5, 2021
SEALs talk war atrocities, Rolling Stone embeds at Camp Pendleton
A Soldier's Pay Bradley is an animated woman of 36, whose tousled long black hair and French accent give her an exotic cast. When I acknowledge her accent, she replies, “Yes, I’m sorry, I’m from ...
February 27, 2021
Will sand save San Diego North County's bluffs?
The Sand at Encinitas Jayme Timberlake — tide-watcher, restoration ecologist, avid surfer — light-foots it down Encinitas’s iconic Stone Steps. She’s barefoot, having kicked off her shoes and left them on the sand-dusted floor of ...
January 13, 2021
San Diego's shadiest characters: John Moores, David Malcolm, Dick Silberman
UCSD, Big Money, and the Ball Club When Gray Davis appointed Padres owner John Moores to the Board of Regents of the University of California, Dynes said, “I’m really looking forward to working with him…I’m ...
January 4, 2021