‘The Shame Machine’ Illuminates a Key Component of Today’s Incivility
The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation offers a means to fight back against shaming but little advice for addressing shameless behavior.
cultural criticism
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.
On Ireland’s Painful Emergence into the Modern World
Fintan O’Toole’s lucid history of Ireland, We Don’t Know Ourselves, is a vivid telling of how his country’s culture of silence and repression was broken open.
John McWhorter’s Polemic ‘Woke Racism’ Covers Controversial Issues with Snark Gnarled by Outrage
John McWhorter’s pushback against the antiracist orthodoxy of Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi lands palpable hits but is too scattered to win the match.
Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen Martin Subverts Verse to Infect the Senses
Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen Martin’s words snake their way into one’s consciousness and viciously bite at the tragic absurdity of American racism.
The Imagination of Disaster 2.0: Revisiting Susan Sontag in the Age of the Pandemic Horror Narrative
Considering Susan Sontag’s “The Imagination of Disaster” and modern apocalyptic narratives, are sci-fi and horror still “inadequate responses” to our world?
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.
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.
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.
Zadie Smith’s ‘Intimations’ Essays Pandemic with Erudite Wit and Compassion
Zadie Smith's Intimations is an essay collection of gleaming, wry, and crisp prose that wears its erudition lightly but takes flight on both everyday and lofty matters.
First Tragedy, Then Farce, Then What?
Riffing off Marx's riff on Hegel on history, art historian and critic Hal Foster contemplates political culture and cultural politics in the age of Donald Trump in What Comes After Farce?
