Speed Kills Speed Kills
Has digital technology destroyed leisure?
Jan 14, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow
Less Is More Less Is More
The dense details in Berlin’s memorial museums overwhelm the stories they try to tell.
Jan 14, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Julia M. Klein
Faith and Suspicion: On Marilynne Robinson’s ‘Lila’ Faith and Suspicion: On Marilynne Robinson’s ‘Lila’
The novelist offers an elegant answer to the question, “What is it to be human?”
Jan 7, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Roxana Robinson
A Conversation With Marilynne Robinson A Conversation With Marilynne Robinson
The novelist talks about liberalism, the language of fiction, and the humanism of John Calvin.
Jan 7, 2015 / Books & the Arts / The Nation
Gunboy Gunboy
killing the child said became like drinking water clean or clean enough though one says that one is part of everything there is a conflict there is a resistance involved this for that that life for this a finger to the lips or to the trigger the revolver is vulgar in the boy’s hands decorated with beads the weapon turns over like a word on the tongue bella bellum the war of all against all the beauty of all against all to emerge from emergency form out of force equal to all those bodies bathed in that free water
Jan 7, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Beth Bachmann
The Picasso Variations The Picasso Variations
Why the painter’s late work veers from the sloppy to the sublime.
Jan 7, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Barry Schwabsky
Censor This? Censor This?
The bogus moral outrage over The Interview.
Jan 7, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Joshua Clover
Dancing With Shiva Dancing With Shiva
Shantala Shivalingappa smolders as she dances the lives of the gods.
Dec 23, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Marina Harss
Paul Thomas Anderson, Director of Depravity Paul Thomas Anderson, Director of Depravity
Joaquin Phoenix and Owen Wilson star in Inherent Vice, a delirious romp through all of man’s perversions.
Dec 23, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Salt Song Salt Song
—Zunis make shrines on the way to a lake where I emerge and Miwoks gather me out of pools along the Pacific the cheetah thirsts for me and when you sprinkle me on rib eye you have no idea how I balance silence with thunder in crystal you dream of butterfly hunting in Madagascar spelunking through caves echoing with dripping stalactites and you don’t see how I yearn to shimmer an orange aurora against flame look at me in your hand in Egypt I scrubbed the bodies of kings and queens in Pakistan I zigzag upward through twenty-six miles of tunnels before drawing my first breath in sunlight if you heat a kiln to 2380 degrees and scatter me inside I vaporize and bond with clay in this unseen moment a potter prays because my pattern is out of his hands and when I touch your lips you salivate and when I dissolve on your tongue your hair rises ozone unlocks a single stroke of lightning sizzles to earth—
Dec 23, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Arthur Sze