Chuck Klosterman’s Rock* Makes Rock Music History Wobble
The further Chuck Klosterman’s alternative music history Rock* travels from its first impossible assumption, the more plausible its cultural logic becomes.
Books
Features, reviews, interviews, and lists about books including cultural commentary and history, non-fiction, literature, and more.
How to Read James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ Without Fears or Tears
To appreciate James Joyce’s Ulysses in our times, it’s essential to understand the author’s playfulness even when it’s annoying.
Colson Whitehead’s ‘Cool Machine’ Is Powered by His Ruminating Prose
Titanic events unfold over the course of Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Trilogy, which ends with Cool Machine, yet the stories truly live in the inner workings of the protagonist’s mind.
Susannah Felts on ‘The Come Apart’ and Creating for Creatives
In Susannah Felts’ The Come Apart, artistic value isn’t tethered to personal ability or metrics of success; she asks us to sit with a deeper question that creatives must contend with.
Physicist Christophe Galfard Takes on Who We Are in ‘This Is Life’
With the techniques of a novelist, Christophe Galfard uses engaging prose, mastery of knowledge in many realms, and remarkable skills of synthesis to explain what is known about life on Earth and possibly elsewhere.
Anthony Kavanagh on ‘Pop Scars’ and Taking the Long Way Home
Through a brisk succession of filmic vignettes – each rendered in unflinching, sometimes grotesque detail – Anthony Kavanagh relays being swept from a council house in Manchester and dropped into the jaws of the teen idol-making monster.
5 Essential Authors Who Are Rethinking Rock Music and Race
These five contemporary authors rethink the relationship between rock music and race, challenging dominant narratives through multiple strategies, genres, and arguments.
The Strokes’ ‘Is This It’ Signaled the Death of Rock Journalism
Steven Hyden’s book on the Strokes, Is This It, is an entertaining and often amusing defence of a band whose importance has always been easier to understand as a cultural phenomenon than as a straightforward commercial success.
Andrew Sacher Immortalises 2010s Emo in ‘Emo Revival’
The 2010s were a pivotal era for emo. One of the most appropriate to trace the history of the emo revival is Andrew Sacher, who spent 16 years covering the scene.
Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Mother Night’ Would Like to Speak to You
Fascism seeks to eradicate difference, that mind-messing hobgoblin. It wants to erase knowledge and create unity in ignorance. Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night distills these themes in our era’s discourse.
Heading Down the Same Bob Dylan Road
Although How Many Roads isn’t an essential Bob Dylan biography, not all books have to be necessary to be effective and rewarding.
James Spooner Reflects on Afropunk and the Black Punk Experience
Afropunk founder James Spooner reflects on the need to rip it up and start again in his new book, It Starts with Anger: A Punk Beginning. An Afropunk Ending.