Books & the Arts

Anderson .Paak

Anderson .Paak, Then and Now Anderson .Paak, Then and Now

Malibu is .Paak’s best work: a layered album that is so fun and easy to listen to that, on each return listen, you hear something new.

Feb 11, 2016 / Books & the Arts / Matthew McKnight

The Paris Metro

Who Was Kafka? Who Was Kafka?

A collection of ephemera complicates the picture of Franz Kafka as a tortured neurotic.

Feb 11, 2016 / Books & the Arts / Reiner Stach

Escape From the DPRK

Escape From the DPRK Escape From the DPRK

How Yeonmi Park, a North Korean defector, became a controversial globe-trotting celebrity on the stage of international human rights.

Feb 11, 2016 / Books & the Arts / E. Tammy Kim

Freedom of Speech v. Civility

Freedom of Speech v. Civility Freedom of Speech v. Civility

Does the speech of students warrant the same First Amendment protections enjoyed by adults?

Feb 11, 2016 / Books & the Arts / Joan Wallach Scott

“Circling Birdies”

“Circling Birdies” “Circling Birdies”

In cartoon worlds, if you’re struck on the head the small birds that encircle your scalp are known as a “halo” or “circling birdies”—a cartoonist’s motif or trope or idiom. Trope i…

Feb 11, 2016 / Books & the Arts / John Kinsella

Garth Greenwell.

Human Nature Shines Through Human Nature Shines Through

Garth Greenwell’s exquisite first novel outlines the shape of desire by filling in everything around it.

Feb 10, 2016 / Books & the Arts / Damon Galgut

Worn portraits of Mao Zedong in Shanghai, China, 2006.

Memories of the Mao Era Memories of the Mao Era

Ji Xianlin’s memoir is the most widely read account of the Cultural Revolution in China. Has it changed the country’s amnesia about its bloody past?

Feb 10, 2016 / Books & the Arts / Chenxin Jiang

Vladimir Sorokin.

Vladimir Sorokin’s Absurdist Excess Vladimir Sorokin’s Absurdist Excess

Even the Russian author’s most sincere explorations tend toward brutal deadpan satire, cartoonish extremes of violence, comically unsexy sex, and flatulence.

Feb 4, 2016 / Books & the Arts / Ben Ehrenreich

Lawrence Alloway at Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, autumn 1965.

In Praise of Lawrence Alloway In Praise of Lawrence Alloway

The former Nation art critic was a great intellectual resource among art writers in the 1960s and ’70s, and a revival of his work is under way.

Feb 4, 2016 / Books & the Arts / Barry Schwabsky

Aaron Swartz in 2012.

The Trials of Aaron Swartz The Trials of Aaron Swartz

A collection of Swartz’s writings is a record of a mind thinking, beautifully, against itself.

Feb 3, 2016 / Books & the Arts / Ava Kofman

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