You Are What You Click: On Microtargeting You Are What You Click: On Microtargeting
Why privacy and anonymity are being violated online by an unstoppable process of data profiling.
Feb 13, 2013 / Books & the Arts / David Auerbach
In Our Orbit: My Lai Rules In Our Orbit: My Lai Rules
Nick Turse’s Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam.
Feb 13, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Richard Kreitner
Stalker Stalker
For the novelist James Lasdun, being stalked online is like “swallowing a cup of poison every morning.”
Feb 13, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Caleb Crain
Shelf Life Shelf Life
Robert Bresson’s The Devil, Probably; Maurice Pilat’s Police; Leo McCary’s My Son John.
Feb 13, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Akiva Gottlieb
Torture and Taboo: On Elaine Scarry Torture and Taboo: On Elaine Scarry
How the work of a literary critic became the proxy for our preoccupation with the horrors of torture.
Feb 5, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Samuel Moyn
Making Strange: On Victor Shklovsky Making Strange: On Victor Shklovsky
A Russian novelist’s fight, in life and art, to see the world afresh in all its cruelty and splendor.
Feb 5, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Ben Ehrenreich
Shelf Life Shelf Life
Amos Oz and Fania Oz-Salzberger’s Jews and Words.
Feb 5, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Laura Brahm
‘Zero Dark Thirty’, Snuff Film ‘Zero Dark Thirty’, Snuff Film
The film’s torture scenes do not excuse or glorify torture; they do something worse: draw the audience into accommodating it.
Jan 30, 2013 / Books & the Arts / JoAnn Wypijewski
Safety Net: On Thomas Bernhard and Siegfried Unseld Safety Net: On Thomas Bernhard and Siegfried Unseld
In his writing and life, Thomas Bernhard led a charge in the opposite direction. His publisher always broke his fall.
Jan 30, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Holly Case
Instructions From Lazarus Instructions From Lazarus
Having risen from the bed, after the ability to stand had been re-established, the gait still adjusting to the shifts of the body’s weight, I found myself in front of the streaked mirror in the hospital room. The halo was dull in that light, almost brushed in appearance. How saintly of me to wear a halo? I wanted a narrator to say: Here, he models the latest headwear, the finest in German engineering. But James Earl Jones was apparently unavailable. The pins buried in my skull looked like a nautical device of some kind. But there were no journeys for me to take, just a bed and a room. My nurse’s name was Zar, short for Lazarus. Of course his name was Lazarus. It fits with the theme of this whole thing. Zar said take it easy, said move slowly and think about each step as if you are learning to walk. But one doesn’t think about each step when learning to walk. We rise, we fumble, we shuffle, we fall. The wings, buried (thankfully) were just an itch between my shoulder blades, a slight tug on the muscles depending on the way I moved. Each night I prayed to make it out of the hospital before the wings made themselves known again.
Jan 30, 2013 / Books & the Arts / C. Dale Young