Miley Cyrus Comes Out for OWS Miley Cyrus Comes Out for OWS
&ldquotLiberty Walk,” the one percenter teen sensation’s catchy, if repetitive, remixed single sets her music to laudatory images from OWS encampments throughout th...
Nov 29, 2011 / Blog / Peter Rothberg
Warring Impulses: Photography’s Documentary and Artistic Strains Warring Impulses: Photography’s Documentary and Artistic Strains
Can a beautiful image also accurately capture a moment in time? Can a documentary photograph also be an object of thoughtful reflection?
Nov 23, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Francis Reynolds
Newt Gingrich and Freddie Mac Newt Gingrich and Freddie Mac
Lambasting pols who got too close to Freddie, Newt failed to say that he himself already Got Freddie payments that were large and steady. As is his custom, Newt was undeterred. Hypocrisy’s not really what occurred. For Newt we’d need to find a stronger word.
Nov 22, 2011 / Column / Calvin Trillin
The Democratic Promise of Occupy Wall Street The Democratic Promise of Occupy Wall Street
Will it last? Skeptics are entitled to their doubts, but I'm confident that, as with the Populist movement of a century ago, OWS will bring lasting change
Nov 22, 2011 / Books & the Arts / William Greider
Beattitudes: On Ann Beattie Beattitudes: On Ann Beattie
Ann Beattie is an artist of the things we don’t say, or can’t, and that find expression anyway.
Nov 22, 2011 / Books & the Arts / William Deresiewicz
Mac the Knife: On Dwight Macdonald Mac the Knife: On Dwight Macdonald
Dwight Macdonald’s panic about Midcult now seems less prescient than misplaced.
Nov 22, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Jennifer Szalai
Erosion: On Errol Morris Erosion: On Errol Morris
Why does Errol Morris cling to a model of documentary photography eighty years out of date?
Nov 22, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Jana Prikryl
Zoned: On the European Union Zoned: On the European Union
The European Union exists in a no-man’s-land between democracy and technocracy.
Nov 22, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Henry Farrell
Obscure Objects of Desire: On Jeffrey Eugenides Obscure Objects of Desire: On Jeffrey Eugenides
In The Marriage Plot Jeffrey Eugenides can’t explain what happens to his characters without throwing in every last why.
Nov 22, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Alexandra Schwartz
Ice Cold Water Ice Cold Water
The palate clears, but the flavor of regional words sticks to the roof of the mind, salt, style slapped to theme: the categorical difference between a shooting star, otherworldly as it is, and its oceanic twin, slippery as a child at the playground, contracting its five arms toward its center, twirling, turning around, riding itself and abiding in its secret pleasures, neither bitter nor dour, which would suggest preference or its absence, something that simply goes from here to there, from one port to another, from this to that shade of meaning. Listen carefully to what is whispered in your ear: bring me “a glass of ice cold water” which, no doubt, will be found in the “ice-box.” But this request has nothing to do with quenching thirst. It has a twin meaning, maybe Siamese. It’s a highly personal way of considering and particularizing a universe that, all of a sudden, belongs to everyone, a currency, the familiar voice of all who open their doors and respond the same way with the same gestures and by so doing come to be themselves. What, otherwise, are a provincial’s daily pleasures? At ease speaking the vernacular God mandates and calling a spade a spade, avoiding any direct link between what was requested and served and what truly corresponds, the said and the received. And so what in other places might be called falling head over heels is rendered here as “a bucketful of ice cold water,” an expression derived from purely metaphoric “snows.” (translated from the Spanish by Forrest Gander)
Nov 21, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Pura Lopez Colome