Friday, May 25 2012
Sherlock Holmes, Dirk Gently and the Case of the Eccentric Detective
With two TV shows returning Arthur Conan Doyle's creation to our screens, Sherlock Holmes has never seemed more influential. But for the good of detective fiction, it might be time to look elsewhere for our unorthodox investigators...
Friday, May 18 2012
Sergio Leone: Something to Do with Death
Britain’s pop culture knight, Christopher Frayling, offers the definitive biography and interpretation of the Spaghetti Western maestro, Sergio Leone.
Monday, May 14 2012
Systemic and Subjective: The Violence of ‘The International’ and the Global Financial Order
The weapons deals in The International and the back-door negotiations between corporate lobbies and Congress are two sides of the same coin; both use overwhelming systemic violence to further their ends.
Monday, May 7 2012
International Beats: The Desire for the Foreign in Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’
With the film adaptation of On the Road just a month away, it's important to once again define what characterized the Beat movement: an infatuation with the foreign.
Tuesday, May 1 2012
The Bloody Ballad of Charlie and Ira Louvin
The Louvin Brothers made heavenly sounds, but the road they took to get there was Hell on Earth.
Monday, April 30 2012
Enjoy Orientalism-Lite with ‘Stranger Magic’
Stranger Magic is an exhaustive compendium of the various tales in the Arabian Nights collection, as well as a robust and energetic investigation into how these stories of “Oriental” myth and folklore have seeped into the European imagination from the 18th century onward.
Thursday, April 26 2012
‘Lord of the Flies’ Still Reigns
Fear and brutality inherent in the human condition and the drive to survive are themes that have never gone out of fashion. The stakes get even higher when those involved are children, and that's obviously a big seller.
Friday, April 20 2012
Where Angels Fear to Tread: Steven Pinker’s ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature’
Is it worst to be killed by a crazed mob wielding machetes or to die via conveyor belt and filing system? The Better Angels of Our Nature keeps falling victim to the halo effect, creating an aura around reason itself.
Thursday, April 19 2012
That Thing That Makes Funk Funky: ‘The One: The Life and Music of James Brown’
James Brown – an untrained musician, mind you, operating on not much more than feel, instinct and desire – revolutionized black pop music, setting off depth charges that would still be exploding a decade hence.
Wednesday, April 11 2012
A Third Spain, Neither Left Nor Right, United by Sex?
"Spanish majas wearing traditional peinetas made-in-Spain enhance their legs with imported French stockings; dark Spanish beauties leave Andalusia to sit in front of American typewriters in an office in Barcelona or Madrid; sexy middle-class señoritas speed away on German bicycles."
Tuesday, April 10 2012
Grunge: Straining to Challenge the Status Quo
Grunge: Music and Memory casts grunge as the unsure middle weight stepping into the ring against one pop music brawler after another. Down goes Michael Jackson, down goes Guns 'n' Roses, and while Springsteen is putting the finishing touches onHuman Touch/Lucky Town, Nirvana and Pearl Jam release the most influential albums of the decade.
Friday, April 6 2012
Not Gonna Lie: ‘The Hunger Games’, Twitter, and Reverse Victimization
Would it matter at all if Katniss Everdeen, a white teenager in the book The Hunger Games, had been portrayed in the film by a suitably teenage and female, black actor? For the young racists who have gone berserk on Twitter about the supporting character Rue being portrayed by an African-American actor, apparently the answer is yes.
Friday, March 30 2012
We Need This Map: Tony Judt and Timothy Snyder’s ‘Thinking the Twentieth Century’
This is a three-dimensional map of intellectual terrain, marked hastily but with enormous detail and vividness in the course of a conversation between two well-regarded historians. They have spread the map out on the hood of your car—or perhaps, in honor of Tony Judt, the map has been handed to you in a train station.
Tuesday, March 27 2012
In Defense Of… Adapting Books, Such as ‘The Hunger Games’, to Film
As The Hunger Games phenomenon fills movie theaters, we are reminded of the age-old idea that the book will forever be better than the movie. Or will it?
Friday, March 2 2012
Exceptional Claims: Principle, Personality and Christopher Hitchens
The late Christopher Hitchens helped define the character and popular perception of Atheism for this generation. But for the self-styled contrarian, where did principle end and personality begin?
Wednesday, February 29 2012
Dead Stars Tell No Tales: Whitney Houston’s Death Casts New Light Onto Memoirs by Two ‘70s Pop Stars
Just as the winners of the war tend to write the history books, only survivors write memoirs. Nile Rodgers' Le Freak and Gil Scott-Heron's The Last Holiday.
Tuesday, February 28 2012
‘A Moveable Feast’ in ‘Midnight in Paris’
Ernest Hemingway compared Paris to a moveable feast because no matter what time it is, Paris is always the magnificent city of lights. Woody Allen expands upon Hemingway's testimony in the magical Midnight in Paris.
Tuesday, February 21 2012
Celebrating the Possibilities of Fiction: A Conversation with Jennifer Egan
Pulitzer Prize winning author Jennifer Egan discusses her unique combination of influences, the role of genre and satire in her work, and the importance of distance in her creative process.
Monday, February 20 2012
Black Music, White People / White Music, Black People
These two books show how knotty the connections between culture, race and music have become, even though the only thing the worlds they explore share in common is that in both cases, the audiences are almost all white.
Friday, February 17 2012
What’s So Funny About Peace, Love, and the Power of Music?
Denise Sullivan represents the insider intellectual stamina of rock 'n' roll journalism without the pomp and pretense. She is the past and future of the form, rolled into one uncanny style.
