popmatters pick

Shigeru Mizuki’s ‘Tono Monogatari’ Gives Readers Immersive Storytelling with a Personal Touch

Shigeru Mizuki’s ‘Tono Monogatari’ Gives Readers Immersive Storytelling with a Personal Touch

In his adaptation of okai stories, ‘Tono Monogatari’, manga artist and historian Shigeru Mizuki is at once narrator, illustrator, reader, and participant, explaining the stories’ connections to Japanese legend and belief.

Filmmaker and Critic Virginie Despentes Is Still, Unfortunately, Quite Necessary

Filmmaker and Critic Virginie Despentes Is Still, Unfortunately, Quite Necessary

Virginie Despentes’ feminist arguments in her recently rebooted collection of essays, King Kong Theory, remain fresh and frustratingly relevant.

Silence Has a Sound: The Unempty Quiet in ‘Sound of Metal’

Silence Has a Sound: The Unempty Quiet in ‘Sound of Metal’

If punk is for those who reject mainstream culture, then in the music film Sound of Metal, nothing is more punk than radical deaf acceptance.

Truths Overlap in Jenny Erpenbeck’s Memoir of German Reunification, ‘Not a Novel’

Truths Overlap in Jenny Erpenbeck’s Memoir of German Reunification, ‘Not a Novel’

Living under the repressive East German regime taught its citizens to distrust their government and read through the lines of its proclamations to glean the reality of a situation, Jenny Erpenbeck explains in Not a Novel.

Pretend It’s a City Proves Once Again, You Can’t Argue with Fran Lebowitz

Pretend It’s a City Proves Once Again, You Can’t Argue with Fran Lebowitz

Fran Lebowitz’s ubiquitous little smirk is still going as strong as ever because she never feels bad about herself.

Alvarez’s ‘In The Time of the Butterflies’ Returns with Undiminished Intensity

Alvarez’s ‘In The Time of the Butterflies’ Returns with Undiminished Intensity

The lure of beautiful beaches might make the Dominican Republic among the most popular tourist destinations in the Caribbean, but the ghosts of its troubled history, as captured in Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies, stalk the living.

Box Brown Takes on the Ultimate Weed Killer in ‘Cannabis’

Box Brown Takes on the Ultimate Weed Killer in ‘Cannabis’

As cannabis legalization spreads, Box Brown's graphic novel, Cannabis, examines the sordid and racist history of how it became demonized in the first place.

Scorsese and Dylan: A Match Made in Fantasy

Scorsese and Dylan: A Match Made in Fantasy

In Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story, a cinematic genius and a Nobel Prize-winning musical icon pair for a magical and purposefully deceptive look at rock 'n' roll life in the mid-'70s.

‘How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents’ Holds Particular Relevance in These Times

‘How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents’ Holds Particular Relevance in These Times

Julia Alvarez's How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents is more relevant in America in 2019 than Alvarez might have imagined her debut novel would be in 1991.

​​’Good Enough’ ​​​Is Great on Darwin

​​’Good Enough’ ​​​Is Great on Darwin

In Good Enough: The Tolerance for Mediocrity in Nature and Society, philosopher Daniel S. Milo argues that science and society have overemphasized Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection

Seth’s ‘Clyde Fans’ and the Revolving Slowdown of a Declining Business

Will Hope Rise from the Dead in Joyce Carol Oates’ ‘My Life As a Rat?

Will Hope Rise from the Dead in Joyce Carol Oates’ ‘My Life As a Rat?

If happiness usually proves duplicitous, and melancholy a dependable constant, then the journey of an epic Joyce Carol Oates novel is always going to be a trip worth experiencing, as with My Life As a Rat.