Shelf Life Shelf Life
Ralph Lemon’s Come Home Charley Patton
May 21, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Marina Harss
Attacks From Within: On Janet Malcolm Attacks From Within: On Janet Malcolm
The war between democracy and aristocracy in Janet Malcolm’s Forty-One False Starts.
May 21, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Mark Oppenheimer
Flappers and Philosophers Flappers and Philosophers
Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight
May 21, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
This Week in ‘Nation’ History: Reviewers Have Argued About ‘Gatsby’ Since 1925 This Week in ‘Nation’ History: Reviewers Have Argued About ‘Gatsby’ Since 1925
The debate surrounding Baz Luhrmann’s film adaptation is nothing new.
May 18, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Katrina vanden Heuvel
Fight Clubs: On Napoleon Chagnon Fight Clubs: On Napoleon Chagnon
One anthropologist’s place in his field’s ongoing battle over questions of power, means and ends.
May 15, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Peter C. Baker
Adler’s Way Adler’s Way
The slowly panic-making power of Renata Adler’s novels Speedboat and Pitch Dark.
May 15, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Alexandra Schwartz
At Brú na Bóinne At Brú na Bóinne
The tumulus—I thought it was a hill at first (trees grow out of one in Sulm)— entered into. It was a clear day, bright, the grass bounded by its hedgerows too green all around and down, the fields’ squares troubled only by the Boyne that just about makes an island of this place snaking through. Sunbeams don’t snake, at least not visibly, though 5,000 years have worked at the Earth’s orbit. Still the light goes in, into the mound through holes one to a side that tunnel towards each other but don’t meet, the sun arriving on time every year unless it’s cloudy. But to do what? Wake the corpse.
May 15, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Elizabeth Arnold
Empire States: On Pankaj Mishra Empire States: On Pankaj Mishra
Why a passionate history of global alternatives to liberal capitalism becomes an exercise in nostalgia.
May 15, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Thomas Meaney
Ways of Rebelling Ways of Rebelling
Who needs to be at peace in the world? It helps to be between wars, to die a few times each day to understand your father’s sky, as you take it apart piece by piece and can’t feel anything, can’t feel the tree growing under your feet, the eyes poking night only to find another night to compare it to. Whoever heard of turning pain into hummingbirds or red birds—haven’t we grown? What does it mean to be older? Maybe a house without doors can still survive a storm. Maybe I can’t find the proper way to rebel or damn it, I can’t leave. I want to, but you grow inside of me. And as I watch you, before I know it, I’m too heavy, too full of you to move. Maybe that’s what they meant when they said you shouldn’t love a country too much.
May 15, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Nathalie Handal
Rome’s Cassandra: On George Weigel Rome’s Cassandra: On George Weigel
The neoconservative leading the fight over the legacy of Vatican II in the American Church.
May 15, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Paul Baumann