Email Author Tom Austin

1994 Stories by Tom Austin

• Swelter 37

  published December 29, 1994

  Actually there were just a few of us in town for the holidays, going from party to party. Sylvester Stallone. Madonna. Emilio Estefan. Ingrid... More >>

• Swelter

  published September 28, 1994

  At a certain level of spiritual coarseness, the nobler aspirations of humanity are stripped of meaning, made ridiculous, and life becomes mere... More >>

• Swelter

  published September 21, 1994

  Some people say life's the thing, but of late we've been seeking solace in air-conditioning and reading, taking comfort in the vast historical... More >>

• Swelter

  published September 14, 1994

  Miami, the ultimate 21st-century city, a portable prison of twisted culture in the vanguard of the bizarre. The demon seed offspring of the... More >>

• Swelter

  published September 7, 1994

  It's a great life, especially on paper, this play of light and darkness, ferreting out scraps of nourishing filth for a curious sort of... More >>

• Swelter 20

  published August 31, 1994

  The summer of discontent, tainted and debased as a leper, taking an immersion course in alien surroundings with an idyll in Atlanta: polite,... More >>

• Swelter

  published August 16, 1994

  The dead zone of summer, fraying tempers and unfortunate behaviors, and yet the interior landscape somehow turns cheery, the system adapting to an... More >>

• Swelter

  published August 10, 1994

  The great advantage of these half-baked atrocities of guerrilla journalism sewn in the shadows of life is the enriching horror of being forced to... More >>

• Swelter

  published August 3, 1994

  A song of August, the dirge of sweat, exhaustion, and derangement, ready to embrace the new cachet of heroin addiction and serial murder. The... More >>

• Swelter

  published July 26, 1994

  An impossible vacation taken in the killing fields of ambition, all anticlimax and dashed desires, overhyped and incapable of escaping the specter... More >>

• Swelter 12

  published July 6, 1994

  Another fling on the food chain of status, happily gearing up for the hard-fought national privilege of summer vacation, content in a suddenly... More >>

• Swelter 11

  published June 29, 1994

  A rhapsody in darkness, the clarion call of klieg lights from overextended clubs sweeping across the horizon, the insidious urges of the nightlife... More >>

• Swelter 10

  published June 22, 1994

  Endgame, sugarplum visions of the Apocalypse, the Twentieth Century running amok and winding down to a last gasp of absurdity. A nation transfixed... More >>

• Swelter 9

  published June 15, 1994

  A profound derangement at loose in the world, eerily as if the rampant insanity of Miami -- the 21st-century city of alien culture -- had... More >>

• Swelter

  published June 8, 1994

  In our long and not especially illustrious career of social reporting, the rich and famous have always proved to be something of an enigma. Once... More >>

• Swelter

  published June 1, 1994

  When fun is your business, clubs can become just another night on the job, a life's work that tends to vaporize all the honest pleasures of the... More >>

• Swelter

  published May 25, 1994

  To the ancients life was short and brutish, but the simplistic scheme of existence must have been a great consolation: functional clothing beyond... More >>

• Swelter

  published May 18, 1994

  The last party, the cartoon universe of Planet Hollywood, the ultimate 21st-century city -- weaned on cheap glitz and operating beyond the pull of... More >>

• Swelter

  published May 11, 1994

  The late and very great Henry James, in between cranking out epicene masterpieces, prided himself on a rigorous public life, dining out every... More >>

• Swelter

  published May 4, 1994

  A filthy little business, the pop parade, crawling with fame-fuckers-I-have-known and other permutations of conceptual humanity. But then,... More >>

• Swelter

  published April 20, 1994

  At a certain professional level in social reporting, going out is almost beside the point. The world, in all it's horror and glory, comes pouring... More >>

• Swelter

  published April 13, 1994

  Adult life, pretty much like high school with more money, an absurd popularity contest waged on a lethal playground, charged with disaster and... More >>

• Swelter

  published April 6, 1994

  In theory, the life of a social columnist should be unutterably fabulous, what with all the random celebrity collusions and the great gravy train... More >>

• Swelter

  published March 30, 1994

  The pop life, one vast theater of the irate, a glorified children's playground where the battles for popularity assume loathsome proportions.... More >>

• Swelter 47

  published March 9, 1994

  The frenzy of show business, permeating and corrupting ordinary existence like a plague. Every level of society lately -- the talented and valid,... More >>