Without Respite Without Respite
Seeing not a person but a thing was the crime of crimes for Primo Levi.
Nov 25, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Vivian Gornick
Debtpop Debtpop
Thinking about debt has become pop, and David Graeber’s Debt is the genre’s “Stairway to Heaven.”
Nov 25, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Joshua Clover
Monumental, Imperial Monumental, Imperial
The beauty and muchness of Ai Weiwei’s art is often underwhelming.
Nov 25, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Barry Schwabsky
Other Roles Other Roles
Auntie man? Black writer? Negress? In The Women, Hilton Als is Hilton Als.
Nov 25, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Aaron Thier
Hannah and Her Admirers Hannah and Her Admirers
Margarethe von Trotta’s biopic of Hannah Arendt is a film about ideas that remains intellectually detached from them.
Nov 19, 2013 / Books & the Arts / David Rieff
The Museum of the Revolution The Museum of the Revolution
The life and work of Victor Serge represents the Russian democratic revolution that never was.
Nov 19, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Sophie Pinkham
Power Down Power Down
The humanitarian impulse has not vanished from US foreign policy. It has simply split into two camps.
Nov 19, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Thomas Meaney
Sea Urchins Sea Urchins
The sea urchins star the sea floor like sunken mines from a rust-smirched war filmed in black and white. Or if they are stars they are negatives of light, their blind beams brittle purple needles with no eyes: not even spittle and a squint will thread the sea’s indigo ribbons. We float overhead like angels, or whales, with our soft underbellies just beyond their pales, their dirks and rankles. Nothing is bare as bare feet, naked as ankles. They whisker their risks in the fine print of footnotes’ irksome asterisks. Their extraneous complaints are lodged with dark dots, subcutaneous ellipses… seizers seldom extract even with olive oil, tweezers. Sun-bleached, they unclench their sharps, doom scalps their hackles, unbuttons their stench. Their shells are embossed and beautiful calculus, studded turbans, tossed among drummed pebbles and plastic flotsam—so smooth, so fragile, baubles like mermaid doubloons, these rose-, mauve-, pistachio- tinted macaroons.
Nov 19, 2013 / Books & the Arts / A.E. Stallings
Shelf Life Shelf Life
Ben Urwand’s The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler.
Nov 19, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Akiva Gottlieb
Just Deserts Just Deserts
Being poor in the United States has rarely meant anything so simple as having too little money.
Nov 19, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Jennifer Szalai