Dare You Enter Jennifer Egan’s Mind Palace ‘The Candy House’?
Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House is an EDM concert, a prestige drama, a mind palace – and a warning.
Books
Janis Joplin on the Outskirts of Town
Janis Joplin didn’t just play the blues or even live the blues, she was the blues – a figure of interminable longing and loneliness: the blues incarnate.
More Than a Nose That Grows: A New Translation of ‘Pinocchio’
Pinocchio author Carlo Collodi was a socially concerned writer who wanted his fellow Italians (especially children) to avoid becoming ensnared in a life of penury.
Comics Artist Darryl Cunningham Puts Vladimir Putin in Perspective
Comics Artist Darryl Cunningham’s latest nonfiction graphic novel, Putin’s Russia, puts Vladimir Putin’s rise to power in simple and clear perspective.
The Bunkered Decades: Digging into the Atom Bomb’s Effect on Cold War America
When Americans realized the atom bomb their country created could be turned on them, arts and society alike bunkered down into nightmares of nuclear destruction.
Take a Whiff of ‘Perfume’ and Enter the World of Queer Culture
How did Calvin Klein’s gender-neutral CK One, with its scent like “a vodka tonic with lemon twist”, help inspire gender revolution?Perfume follows the fragrant path into queer culture.
Baby’s Got Beats: Punk Drummers on How They Got Their Bang
Punk Drummers Greendays’ Tré Cool, the Wrecks’ Lynn Perko-Truell, Rat Scabies’ Shari Page, and Rough Francis’ Urian Hackney on the need to make beats.
Writer/Comedian Amy Silverberg Wants Freedom on Stage and on the Page
Amy Silverberg’s comedy is at once wry, playful, and at times beautifully filthy, like the trash-riddled Santa Monica Pier during a pink-tangerine sunset.
Debut Novel ‘Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You’ Brims with Menace
Ariel Delgado Dixon’s compulsively readable debut novel, Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You, explores what it means to cope with a shared, painful past.
The Missing Chapter in Terry Eagleton’s Critical Revolutionaries
Terry Eagleton’s richly informed writing is enhanced by perspicacity, wit, and discrimination. Yet his focus on five writers in ‘Critical Revolutionaries’ is missing something.
Novel or Stories? Author Kate Wisel on the Powerful Paradox of Linked Collections
Kate Wisel, the author of Driving in Cars with Homeless Men, shares her thoughts on writing linked story collections, drawing inspiration from real life, and adapting her work for television.