Essays

Adrenochrome Supplements for the Postmodern Condition

by

Without any dogmatic adherence to the collection of conspiracies, QAnon followers often choose which of the individual narratives to follow within the larger collection, a build-your-own history.

Talking in the Void

by

As we look to philosophers, our sense of failure only grows in intensity.

William Gaddis’s Failure

by

The Gaddis I like best to think of is a God-haunted aristocrat. Thrown pearl-clutching into a fallen world, he gathers himself and understands it as his task to recognize what instances of the eternal still obtain, among things melted into air.

An Arc of Light Across the Cold War Sky

by

What began in 1947 as a largely hopeful movement defined by wonder, openness, and concern for mankind, plunged into the paranoia-fueled mire that skeptics had always assumed the UFO movement to be.

Paranoia as Resistance in Gloria Naylor’s 1996

by

Fake news, mass surveillance, and global pandemic aren’t mere tropes to explore the life of the mind. They are our everyday lives.

The First Book of Mary Norbert Korte: A Research

by

Her first book, Hymn to the Gentle Sun of 1967, was, in many ways, the catalyst for Korte’s transition from nun to radical poet.

The Brief Life of Brutalism

by

Only now, fifty years after the formal end of the Brutalist movement, does it appear in the timeline of world architecture not so much as a steppingstone but as a stumbling block.

The End of the Road: The Last Great Road Bum by Héctor Tobar

by

If Walter Benjamin’s angel of history moved backwards, observing society’s wreckage but blind to its progress, the many avatars of Joe’s wandering generation saw the whole world blurry, victims of their own velocity.

Starlets of Dystopian Sport

by

Rollerball and Death Race 2000 may have been early entrants into diagnosing that dreadful feeling that accompanies the unbeatable supremacy of capitalism.

Here Comes the Small Press

by

The bookmobile’s appropriation by the small press community, although on a relatively small scale, played a crucial role in forming independent publishing communities.