Why Has ‘My Struggle’ Been Anointed a Literary Masterpiece? Why Has ‘My Struggle’ Been Anointed a Literary Masterpiece?
With its lack of art and absence of thought, the blockbuster Norwegian novel disappoints.
May 13, 2014 / Books & the Arts / William Deresiewicz
Nobody Else Sounds Like Lydia Davis Nobody Else Sounds Like Lydia Davis
Because nobody else thinks like her.
May 13, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Alexandra Schwartz
What Was Democracy? What Was Democracy?
Democracy was once a comforting fiction. Has it become an uninhabitable one?
May 13, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Thomas Meaney and Yascha Mounk
Mugwump Mugwump
O beggar, bigwig, mugwump —W.H. Auden If you got to look it up, don’t use it. A pity since we’ve all known one, guy checking time cards, signing requisitions, woman working her way center stage of my worries. Every decision she weighs, I’m on the balance, the bigwig. Turns out, as from the mess of history because the Algonquians had no clue about Imperator and Centurion and seeing no way to excise dominion and ranks from the account, giving Caesar what’s Caesar’s so to speak, and Antiochus the Seleucid’s also, John Eliot, to let his catechumens into the kindling of the lord, his Praying Indians in Natick, Ponkapoag, Lowell, rendered the smug of sovereign, war-lord, arrayer in a single Wampanoag word, come down as Mugwump, dated but still chiefly American in its broad-brush picture of the nothings who oversaw our stints at register or sink, or the guy tightening the dirndl strap on barmaid or mid-level manager and CEO too. They’re fine, I figure, with our menial seasons, the bosses seeing us cross over—shrugs of resignation—v from knuckle down to knuckle under and since acquaintance with the eternal requires no minutiae, lives by mass or matins, Mugwump serves their kind right.
May 13, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Sebastian Agudelo
How Tolerant Should We Be of Intolerance? How Tolerant Should We Be of Intolerance?
It’s one of the most ticklish questions of liberal philosophy.
May 13, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Cathy Gere
Therianthrope Therianthrope
As with the exuviae burring to the bark minotaur had to have a live animal as source and hunger, the moil that attends a kill and props beast near night start, lets it squat in dream to mix and match till monster mitigates unease. Enter King, husband, father ready to co-opt, adopt, foster. He’ll dream a decoy, strap it to the wife, awe with labyrinth and cash-in on mooncalf, exacter, changeling, the horror, the first puppet of the state.
May 13, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Sebastian Agudelo
Overculminated Overculminated
In Zündel’s Exit, Markus Werner gorges on the limit point of madness.
May 13, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Ricky D’Ambrose
What Is the Genus of Genius? What Is the Genus of Genius?
How the religion of genius collapsed under the blows of egalitarianism.
May 13, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Warren Breckman
In Shape In Shape
Here are the old folks anchored by old wisdom to the ground, or by old wisdom swiveling on one foot and deliberately tracing a camber in the horizon, karate chop by karate chop. So many meticulous minutes into this, if no castles in the air, they’ve outlined that curvilinear ebb and flow in one of Gehry’s pipe dreams: receding chambers, curls, soft arches cantilevers, like canvases unfolding to wind. The dog stops dead on its tracks, sits and gives a slant look that’s all dog candor and nosiness. The embarrassed owner pulls. The cellophane-wrapped jogger turns also. Pure formalists, they are, the old folks, focusing on the movement of an ostensible form, a structure, something wrought within and needing outing though it’s nothing like art, just fending off stuff inside, cancers, heart attacks in the slow-mo, real moves of fight and war.
May 13, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Sebastian Agudelo
New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival 2014—Review New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival 2014—Review
Eric reviews Jazz Fest 2014.
May 9, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Eric Alterman