The Unmentionable Whiteness of ‘Americanaland’
John Milward’s new history of Americana puts the mixed genre at the corner of country and rock while slighting race and the music’s Black roots and performers.
Books
Recorded Music Is Everlasting and That’s a Problem Argues ‘Decomposed’
Kyle Devine’s Decomposed is a landmark contribution to musicology, offering a sobering but sorely needed account of recorded music’s environmental consequences.
Belarusian Fiction ‘Red Crosses’ Creates Story with Confusion
With its deliberately disjointed narrative shifts, is Sasha Filipenko’s Belarusian fiction Red Crosses a story of memory or memory of a story?
Ariel Dorfman’s Novella ‘The Compensation Bureau’ Is a Fantastical Plea for Hope
A thin book of big ideas, Ariel Dorfman’s ‘The Compensation Bureau’ leaves much to the imagination, like a brilliant sketch of a fantastical parable.
Judy Chicago’s Feminist Art Is Still Flowering
In her autobiography Still Flowering, Judy Chicago also offers a plainspoken, powerful discussion about the growth of feminist art.
Is Louis Menand Right About the Death of Art and Thought in America?
For intellectual historian Louis Menand, the Cold War gave rise to prospects and paradoxes in America, and Art was given status through essential criticism.
Peter Weiss and Further Reflections of a Political Kind
Vol. II of Peter Weiss’ novel and documentary history, The Aesthetics of Resistance, laments struggles lost as Nazism and WWII take hold.
Billy Porter Gets Real in Memoir ‘Unprotected’
Divine but not a diva, Billy Porter struggles and revels in the Ministry of Art. Memoir Unprotected is his book of revelation.
Memoir and Criticism in Matthew Specktor’s ‘Always Crashing the Same Car’
As a critic of both films and literature, Matthew Specktor has a balanced touch that keeps the scales even in his memoir, Always Crashing in the Same Car.
Gianrico Carofiglio’s Three O’Clock in the Morning Gently Awakens the Mind
Gianrico Carofiglio’s drive for simplicity and directness in Three O’Clock in the Morning carries the reader along to clarity about fundamental truths.
‘Klara and the Sun’ Explores What Makes Us Tick
‘Klara and the Sun’ is dappled with themes of personal identity and death, in one form or another.