About the Book

A variegated and delightful collection of magazine writer Jon Bradshaw’s essential writings, The Ocean Is Closed rediscovers a memorable talent and offers us an entrancing view of mid-century culture beyond the shadow of the literary canon. With droll wit and keen intelligence, Bradshaw’s cinematic prose brings the ’70s to vibrant life—from the lurid pick-up scenes at hotspots like Maxwell’s Plum in New York and the Beverly Hills Hotel in L.A., to full-bodied portraits of literary figures such as W.H. Auden and Tom Stoppard; from affectionate profiles of hustlers and con men like Bobby Riggs and Minnesota Fats, to chilling reportage about street gangs in the Bronx, terrorism in Germany, and mercenary freedom fighters in India.

Jon Bradshaw, a man of tremendous personal charm, good humor and rugged beauty, was a literary concoction of his own devising: the magazine writer as world-weary traveler and man about town. Adored by British royalty, magazine editors, movie executives, and professional mercenaries alike, Bradshaw first made a splash in London during the Swinging Sixties. Pals with the likes of Anna Wintour, Timothy Leary, Gore Vidal, and Martin Amis, his career flourished at a time when magazines were at the center of the cultural conversation, delivering stories that were talked about for weeks. For twenty years, he cut a distinctive figure in this world, before his untimely death.  A forgotten master of longform magazine writing, Bradshaw is ripe for rediscovery as one of the sharpest chroniclers of his age. 

Praise for The Ocean Is Closed

"A long-overdue anthology of writings by a great—and now largely forgotten—long-form journalist. Charming, handsome, and erudite, Bradshaw, who died in 1986 at age 48, surprised no one when Mick Jagger crossed a room to spend an hour chatting with him. Said biographer A. Scott Berg, according to editor Belth, 'he was possibly the most social animal I ever knew.'... Exemplary journalism by a writer who deserves to be in every nonfiction anthology and textbook henceforth."

—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

“Bradshaw was a famously charming man, and his lounge-lizard urbanity fully suffuses his prose. This new anthology is a necessary book for all men and women of letters.” 

—Martin Amis

“Bradshaw was connected to the world like electricity—he was an everything man, a Renaissance man. But hanging out with Bradshaw was never about work, just fun and life. He was comfortable to be with and there was always great conversation and laughter. We could talk about everything. He was a soul friend.”

—Grace Jones

"Jon Bradshaw was the beau ideal of the magazine writer when I arrived in New York in the ’70s. I saw him play tennis once and he handled the racket the way he did a typewriter—with fierce energy and inventive brio. I shall cherish this volume." 

—Graydon Carter

“A new collection of work by the late Jon Bradshaw, one of the leading practitioners of magazine journalism during the 1970s and ’80s. (This is the third publication of ZE Books, which produces beautiful volumes devoted to honoring writers and their work.) The articles gathered here, thoughtfully curated and edited by Alex Belth, share one feature in common: they are tales of excess, of personalities who talk too much, drink too much, gamble too much, who often live in a world beyond the boundaries most of us won’t cross... It is a tribute to Bradshaw’s storytelling skills that reading his accounts of the exploits of dead outlaws remains entertaining and compelling... It was a golden age of magazine features—of which Bradshaw’s pieces were prime examples… The Ocean Is Closed is a fitting tribute to a writer who might otherwise be forgotten, a magazine writer’s writer, whose talent and personality was such that all doors seemed open to him.”

—Tom Teicholz, Los Angeles Review of Books

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