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
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
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
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”
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
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
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’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
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
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