Books & the Arts

Shelf Life Shelf Life

Laurent Dubois’s Hati: The Aftershocks of History.

Mar 14, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Joshua Jelly-Schapiro

The Suit The Suit

She said take it off slowly so I can Master when it begins; I want to watch How you work button by button through   Each skillful undertaking and so he moved As if to include her but she would not touch Or help with jacket or tie, determined   To solve from where he comes and also To learn the color of how he can disappear Into the sea of more and more   Black. She is tired of thinking Further. This time everything off until the firmament Shows up. Upon which she puts down the compass   Of her body to lie along the pressed Cloth and slip into all that dark material Each arm, wrist against each cuff to see how   It is done.

Mar 14, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Sophie Cabot Black

Till the Knowing Ends: On William Gass

Till the Knowing Ends: On William Gass Till the Knowing Ends: On William Gass

In Life Sentences, William Gass shows that consciousness needs to be stressed to be strengthened.

Mar 7, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Joanna Scott

Faces out of the Crowd: On the Renaissance Portrait Faces out of the Crowd: On the Renaissance Portrait

How Renaissance painters brought human presence to the fore.

Mar 7, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Barry Schwabsky

The Uprooted

The Uprooted The Uprooted

A new history of Europe’s postwar world and its displaced persons.

Mar 7, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Holly Case

Duvalier and Haiti’s Triple Threat

Duvalier and Haiti’s Triple Threat Duvalier and Haiti’s Triple Threat

Why was Baby Doc able to return after decades of exile and evade justice, despite his crimes?

Feb 29, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Amy Wilentz

Life After Merce

Life After Merce Life After Merce

Can the work of Merce Cunningham survive his death and the closing of his dance company?

Feb 29, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Marina Harss

Of Deserts and Promised Lands: The Dream of Global Justice Of Deserts and Promised Lands: The Dream of Global Justice

Jenny Martinez and Kathryn Sikkink offer conflicting histories of the ascendency of international courts.

Feb 29, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Samuel Moyn

How to Watch a Police Beating How to Watch a Police Beating

First off, there should be two sets of laws— act like an ox and try not to be nonwhite or named Becky. A hippie, with its gauche idealism still intact, is annoying and self-destroying so administrations can contain it better. It's also an enormous help that your skin is recorded like data on the surface of your body, it broadcasts a signal—that you're tripping your face off at the prom for instance.   My eyes feel more Episcopalian than ever, those furry little hellions that forcefully broke up a peaceful assembly of women's rights activists. Parking violations can carry bigger fines than beating up women and you act like these people can tape you but you can't tape yourself.   Perhaps if the police bombed a foreign country with lattes my friends would begin to act like themselves again. It seems to me that this is not an assemblage of rights activists at all, said the lion, but a love of replacing state violence with video game violence, great movie gore and plans to repopulate the entire province with horny people again, to participate without these detached coagulations of disoriented rage branching off Falstaff just for the heck of it.  To act as banker, you have to live on interest or uncover laughter at a huge obese religious electoral reform corsage. I guess you're supposed to go through and deny each of the five senses individually.

Feb 29, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Drew Gardner

A Man Escaped A Man Escaped

Jafar Panahi’s This Is Not a Film; Kimi Takesue’s Where Are You Taking Me?; Manfred Kirchheimer’s Art Is…The Permanent Revolution

Feb 29, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans

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