Robyn Hitchcock’s Tale of Two Obsessions
The beating heart of Robyn Hitchcock’s memoir, Stranded in the Future, is not necessarily his career but two great obsessions that inspired it.
Books
Features, reviews, interviews, and lists about books including cultural commentary and history, non-fiction, literature, and more.
Michael Bracewell’s Pop Fantasy ‘The Smiths: A Novella’ Is a Stunning Evocation
Michael Bracewell’s latest novella is a Proustian, circuitous meditation on the 1980s zeitgeist, shaped by personal recollections of the Smiths.
The Velvet Underground Get a “Sister Ray”-Sized Biography
Among his many discoveries about the Velvet Underground, Richie Unterberger’s description of unheard tapes will have fans salivating.
Gen X Suffers Mainstream Culture Constipation
In today’s overstuffed, mainstream culture of recycled “art”, nothing old moves and nothing new gets through. It’s enough to make a Gen-Xer pretty damn cranky.
Love Story’s Subjection to the State
For all its couture fashion and bio-pic fluff, Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette is radical in how it echoes Laura Kipnis’ polemic, Against Love.
‘The Coast of Everything’ Is Not a Puzzle to Be Solved But a Process to Inhabit
Guillermo Stitch’s metafiction The Coast of Everything is the sort of book that makes you feel simultaneously more intelligent and more illiterate.
Solace House’s Unsettling Tale of Coming-of-Age in Liminal Spaces
The horror in Will Maclean’s Solace House is informed by preoccupations as diverse as Usborne Books’ Mysteries of the Unknowm, The Backrooms, Shirley Jackson, and Donna Tartt.
‘Recomposed’ Performs a Fundamental Interpretation of the Music Industry
Recomposed explores how musicians and entrepreneurs of the “great recomposition” attempt to reconcile ecological responsibility with financial self-preservation, revealing the difficulty of pursuing climate action within market logic itself.
Vampires and the Ecstasy of Consumer Submission
Vampires once symbolized aristocratic tyranny, but now mirror decadent late-capitalist enthrallment. Our ecstasy of submission – to the vampire, the corporation, the franchise reboot, the Kickstarter campaign – offers relief from the heavy burden of autonomy.
Staging Cultural Erasure in Ukraine’s Borderland
Journalist James Verini resurfaces the stories of those who sheltered from Putin’s war in the iconic Ukrainian theater, peeling back layers on a microcosm of the country’s struggle for cultural survival.
Ethel Barrymore’s Stifling Familial Obligation
Kathleen Spaltro’s biography of Ethel Barrymore explores how her acceptance of her familial fate as a serious actor came at great cost to her creativity.
The Spoils of War
Among the most coveted spoils of America’s wars, critic Andrew Cockburn argues, is the money pulled from taxpayers’ pockets never to be returned to the country’s social welfare.