Features

WRECK-IT RALPH: a Primer for Dads on Smashing Patriarchy

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There is no ideal world for a person that pre-exists one’s participation in creating it. But here’s what Ralph and I can do: hurl our fumbling selves against the world. Smash it up real good.

Richard Dawkins and the Ascent of Madness

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Wander too far down the path of rationalist dogma and it’ll be no surprise if you end up like Richard Dawkins, sunning his genitals in a world that no longer makes any sense.

Sometimes We Live No Particular Way But Our Own: The Grateful Dead and Epicureanism

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If the Grateful Dead will always be stuck somewhere between band and cult, Epicureanism itself has been stuck between cult and philosophy since it was founded around 300 BCE.

Writing Decline: Detroit City in Print

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Four books attempt to describe the Detroit of past and present: two good, one bad, one of such inconsequence its inclusion here is only justified as an act of collation.

No Master

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Anderson’s movies promote a particular fallacy: they encourage us to accept the symbol for the reality.

Khaled al-Khamissi on TAXI, the maqama, and Prime Minister Johnny Walker

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TAXI isn’t a collection of short stories, or a novel, or a piece of journalism, it is a maqama, an old style of Arabic literature. Each chapter is one facet of the greater picture: the street in Cairo in that particular moment.

We Built This City: DETROPIA and CRUEL OPTIMISM

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Detropia registers a mood of attenuated uncertainty, the precarious present understood not as a single melodramatic catastrophe but as “a thick moment of ongoingness.”

Book Club: Heroines – DAY 3

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Day 3 of our Book Club on Kate Zambreno’s Heroines

Book Club: Heroines – DAY 2

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Day 2 of our Book Club on Kate Zambreno’s Heroines.

Book Club: Heroines – DAY 1

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Day 1 of our book club on Kate Zambreno’s Heroines