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Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1964 by Susan Sontag
Sontag's journals suggest that the self is a conditional and transitory creation; elusive and slippery as an artful lover who wants to be a writer.
05 Mar 2009
Books
Blind Man with a Pistol: Ishmael Reed’s Misguided Pow-Wow
Anyone who has witnessed affirmative action policies in play can tell you that bad apples are chosen to fulfill a quota, not unlike a cop who harasses every citizen who bears a vague resemblance to a wanted suspect.
25 Feb 2009
Books
Best Food Writing 2008, ed. Holly Hughes
Molecular gastronomy? Check. Locavores? Check. Post-Katrina restaurant recovery? Cloned meat? Paeans to the wonders of pig? Check, check, check.
18 Dec 2008
Books
The Best of Sexology, ed. Craig Yoe
In1933 Gernsback published a pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-scientific magazine devoted to sex and all its mysteries, vagaries, varieties -- not to mention all its anxieties.
15 Dec 2008
Books
The Letters of Allen Ginsberg
Ginsberg was hyperaware of the frequent charge that Beat poetry was little more than improvised mumbo jumbo baked from jazz records and marijuana smoke.
01 Dec 2008
Books
New Stories from the South 2008: The Year's Best
Flannery O'Conner's hauntingly gothic South meets the modern American search for meaning in yet another superb edition of this series.
Justin Dimos
22 Sep 2008
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Arcade Fire and H.G. Wells: The Lies Machine
What of the world when the champions look and sound like lesser versions of what came seven years before them, except with less humor and a more elevated sense of their own cultural importance?
Colin Snowsell
10 Aug 2008
Music
Arcade Fire and H.G. Wells: The Lies Machine
Pop music may still travel in revolutions, but not along a fixed course maintaining an even degree of distance from its point of origin. Like a moon intolerant of its gravitation pull, each cycle drifts us further and further from the cycle before it.
Colin Snowsell
10 Aug 2008
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Songs, Swoosh-ified
The quintessential element of the digital audio revolution is the creation of the ‘random’ button, that default 'shuffle function', which renders us no longer creators of mix-tapes, but consumers of playlists.
12 Feb 2008
Books
The Portable Atheist
Sectarian strife, an historical constant, and its images of suicide bombings, occupation, and crumbling civil societies are sadly ubiquitous and have fueled the passions of the “New Atheism”. This will not soon abate.
Barry Lenser
04 Feb 2008
Books
Comic Art 9
Stack this book next to Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art and McCloud's Understanding Comics -- or rather, don't stack it at all, but keep it right next to your desk where you can find it at a moment's notice.
24 Jan 2008
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Lead Us Not Into Speculation, Nor Excessive Computation
A prominent philosopher argues that you, me, and everyone you know may be an artificial computer-simulation of a person.
George Reisch and Nick Bostrom
14 Jan 2008
Books
Sleaze Artists by Jeffrey Sconce
It must surely be daunting for any young film scholar with an interest in trash to come face to face with the volume of academic work that’s been done on once-disreputable movies.
02 Jan 2008
Books
The Granta Book of Reportage by Ian Jack
In an era of media overload and addiction to the immediate, he's demarcating a space for the measured, thoughtful, and in-depth narratives that can only be put together by the man (or woman) on the ground.
Chris McCann
16 Dec 2007
Books
The Agnostic Reader
The book would have benefited from more dedicated considerations of the implications of doubt for human understanding and action. Aside from the final section, these concerns were not much in evidence.
29 Nov 2007
Books
Living Blue in the Red States by David Starkey
The best of these essays acknowledge the false dichotomy of red and blue, confront personal biases, and outline the disillusionment of the left at both the right and itself.
Andy Fogle
25 Nov 2007
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Read Rage
Moving others to constructive action, whether by persuasive or expository means, as Gutkind has done with Rage and Reconciliation, is the hallmark of socially-engaged literature.
16 Apr 2007
Reviews
Truth or Dare: A Book of Secrets Shared by Justine Picardie
This is less about confession, and more about who these writers are and how they got that way.
Nikki Tranter
10 Jan 2005
Reviews
Advertising Annual 2002 and New Talent Design Annual 2002 by B. Martin Pedersen, Editor
From an intellectual property standpoint, creativity is seen more and more as a force of constant innovation.
Aaron Beebe
14 Jan 2003
Reviews
The Uncanny: Experiments in Cyborg Culture by Bruce Grenville, Editor
It's a lucid look at the fears that plague academics everywhere...Will I lose tenure to an intelligent toaster oven?"
John Biggs
29 Oct 2002
Reviews
Conversations with Richard Ford by Huey Guagliardo, Editor
Ford just may be the least catty writer in history. 'Other people's successes do not diminish you, your failures don't help others.'"
Mark Dionne
28 May 2002
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