Calculators and Butterflies Calculators and Butterflies
Italo Calvino’s Complete Cosmicomics thrives on the tension between ideas and art.
Nov 5, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Aaron Thier
Billboards Billboards
Florida I-95 America Needs a Faith Lift; a pregnant woman with a stem rose and a pointing, bearded God quoting Jeremiah quoting God; a gray, washed-out steak: What Vegetarians Eat When They Cheat— or was it what the Vegetables ate? You could see where the grease once shone on the old meat. Inside, the silence. —Tell me something.v —No, you! We unbutton our pants. Arms jiggling over fifty-five, thighs spread out on the seat and as far as the eye can see: thousands of carfulls of spreading thighs, the feel and smell of the seatbelt nylon, cricked trapezii. V a s e c t o m y. Oh, to feel your hand on my knee! A lone willow in the field: textbook, and the toxic cows, the steak itself gnawing beside the flesh-filled cars, the rootless wombs that drive themselves.
Nov 5, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Sarah Trudgeon
Shelf Life Shelf Life
Insurrections of the Mind thinks insurrections ought to happen only in the mind.
Nov 5, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Richard Kreitner
Corporate Media Companies Are the Real Winners in the 2014 Midterms Corporate Media Companies Are the Real Winners in the 2014 Midterms
Eric on this week’s concerts and Reed on how local TV stations boost their bottom lines with a deluge of election ads.
Nov 3, 2014 / Blog / Eric Alterman and Reed Richardson
What Are ‘Nation’ Interns Reading the Week of 10/30/14? What Are ‘Nation’ Interns Reading the Week of 10/30/14?
What are interns reading for the week of 10/30/14?
Nov 3, 2014 / Books & the Arts / StudentNation
5 Books: Gabriella Coleman’s Best Reads on Hacking 5 Books: Gabriella Coleman’s Best Reads on Hacking
These books are crucial background to the debate over Edward Snowden.
Oct 29, 2014 / 5 Books / Gabriella Coleman
Drawing a Frame Drawing a Frame
In his music and his prose, Virgil Thomson perfected a whimsically deadpan sensibility.
Oct 28, 2014 / Books & the Arts / James Longenbach
Strange History Strange History
John Lahr’s biography of Tennessee William gets mired down in psychoanalysis.
Oct 28, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Julia M. Klein
Civilian Objects Civilian Objects
Architecture lets us speak of the spoken indirectly.
Oct 28, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Michael Sorkin
Algeria Algeria
You eat a songbird From beginning to end. You pierce your gums With tiny ribs For a squirt of her liquor Down your throat. Mitterrand hid his pleasure & his shame Under a clean white napkin as His own blood mixed with his last meal. We are kept in the dark To be tender & fat. The ortolan bunting sings A beautiful song & Stains our teeth from behind.
Oct 28, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Sylvie Baumgartel