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
NYPL Shelves Plan to Gut Central Library NYPL Shelves Plan to Gut Central Library
After public outcry, the library’s $300 million project to demolish stacks and sell off branch libraries has collapsed.
May 7, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Scott Sherman
My Memories of Gabriel García Márquez My Memories of Gabriel García Márquez
What more could a young writer want than to spend hours and hours with the greatest author alive?
May 6, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Ariel Dorfman
Hungary and the End of Politics Hungary and the End of Politics
How Victor Orbán launched a constitutional coup and created a one-party state.
May 6, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Kim Lane Scheppele
Antiquity Too Antiquity Too
—after Goethe Antiquity too had arms, legs, loins, and while its shadows thrashed on stone it would one day be, fucked, flicker-lit, like you, like me.
May 6, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Christian Wiman
They Have No Graves They Have No Graves
Catholic Innocence meets Jewish Experience after the Holocaust in Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida.
May 6, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
A Strange Luminescence A Strange Luminescence
W.G. Sebald’s A Place in the Country.
Apr 30, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Ben Ehrenreich
Higher Beings Commanded Higher Beings Commanded
A quartet of shows at MoMA decoct enlightenment from the banal.
Apr 30, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Barry Schwabsky
Learning From Mexico Learning From Mexico
Richard Rodriguez’s vision of racial mixing as New World destiny.
Apr 30, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Daniel Brook
Survivalpop Survivalpop
The desperate situation of country’s popularity.
Apr 30, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Joshua Clover