The Listeners – Leni Zumas
The mélange of information is surprisingly coherent, and unflaggingly intense.
Stage Magic: One Hundred Years of Tennessee Williams
Such moments—of threatened people carving out a beautiful space in a harsh world—became Williams’ hallmark.
Features
Armageddon: The Other American Dream
Evil is a house of mirrors, and the Devil perhaps nothing more than the imagined embodiment of our every devilish inclination.
Daisey Chain
Was it wrong to present "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" as creative nonfiction? Is it a “true” story, as Daisey claims? These are hard questions in an age where our definitions of journalism and the journalist are being re-drawn.
Stairs and Stares: A Look at Downton Abbey and its Ancestry
There is something doubly satisfying about watching a program which allows modern viewers to imagine themselves both as a lounging aristocrat and as a hyper-attentive servant.
Interviews
John Long
The robots are here, we did it, we brought them into our lives. We built them. They're all around us.
Megan Mayhew Bergman
The culture wars, both imagined and real, make for great tension, and that’s the stuff narrative is born from.
David Harvey
The big question from Marx’s perspective is: what kind of human nature are we going to try and create, and how do we do that?
Blog
How to Find the Things You Like
My cultural consumption has become a well-oiled machine, generating mostly superb product with only the occasionally dud.
The Rhetoric of Marriage Rights
Change is a process and we are still at a fairly early stage of gender and sexuality reform. But we should be redefining “normal,” not bending to it.
Gnostic Creation Myths and Foul Language
FORMING is a super strange graphic novel published by the super strange English publishing house NOBROW and written by possible genius Jesse Moynihan.
Reviews
Panopticon – Steve McCaffery
PANOPTICON is ultimately a profoundly optimistic work, a leap of faith that chooses to revel in the opacity of language because — well, just because.
Kaltenburg – Marcel Beyer
Most haunting of all is the prospect of losing one’s perceptive abilities.
Almost Never – Daniel Sada
Almost Never is like a comedy of manners cut with a pulpy erotic novel, a social satire impelled by a dripping lecherousness. Most of all, it’s a fantastic, exciting book.
