Mugwump Mugwump
O beggar, bigwig, mugwump —W.H. Auden If you got to look it up, don’t use it. A pity since we’ve all known one, guy checking time cards, signing requisitions, woman working her way center stage of my worries. Every decision she weighs, I’m on the balance, the bigwig. Turns out, as from the mess of history because the Algonquians had no clue about Imperator and Centurion and seeing no way to excise dominion and ranks from the account, giving Caesar what’s Caesar’s so to speak, and Antiochus the Seleucid’s also, John Eliot, to let his catechumens into the kindling of the lord, his Praying Indians in Natick, Ponkapoag, Lowell, rendered the smug of sovereign, war-lord, arrayer in a single Wampanoag word, come down as Mugwump, dated but still chiefly American in its broad-brush picture of the nothings who oversaw our stints at register or sink, or the guy tightening the dirndl strap on barmaid or mid-level manager and CEO too. They’re fine, I figure, with our menial seasons, the bosses seeing us cross over—shrugs of resignation—v from knuckle down to knuckle under and since acquaintance with the eternal requires no minutiae, lives by mass or matins, Mugwump serves their kind right.
May 13, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Sebastian Agudelo
How Tolerant Should We Be of Intolerance? How Tolerant Should We Be of Intolerance?
It’s one of the most ticklish questions of liberal philosophy.
May 13, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Cathy Gere
Therianthrope Therianthrope
As with the exuviae burring to the bark minotaur had to have a live animal as source and hunger, the moil that attends a kill and props beast near night start, lets it squat in dream to mix and match till monster mitigates unease. Enter King, husband, father ready to co-opt, adopt, foster. He’ll dream a decoy, strap it to the wife, awe with labyrinth and cash-in on mooncalf, exacter, changeling, the horror, the first puppet of the state.
May 13, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Sebastian Agudelo
Overculminated Overculminated
In Zündel’s Exit, Markus Werner gorges on the limit point of madness.
May 13, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Ricky D’Ambrose
What Is the Genus of Genius? What Is the Genus of Genius?
How the religion of genius collapsed under the blows of egalitarianism.
May 13, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Warren Breckman
In Shape In Shape
Here are the old folks anchored by old wisdom to the ground, or by old wisdom swiveling on one foot and deliberately tracing a camber in the horizon, karate chop by karate chop. So many meticulous minutes into this, if no castles in the air, they’ve outlined that curvilinear ebb and flow in one of Gehry’s pipe dreams: receding chambers, curls, soft arches cantilevers, like canvases unfolding to wind. The dog stops dead on its tracks, sits and gives a slant look that’s all dog candor and nosiness. The embarrassed owner pulls. The cellophane-wrapped jogger turns also. Pure formalists, they are, the old folks, focusing on the movement of an ostensible form, a structure, something wrought within and needing outing though it’s nothing like art, just fending off stuff inside, cancers, heart attacks in the slow-mo, real moves of fight and war.
May 13, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Sebastian Agudelo
NYPL Shelves Plan to Gut Central Library NYPL Shelves Plan to Gut Central Library
After public outcry, the library’s $300 million project to demolish stacks and sell off branch libraries has collapsed.
May 7, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Scott Sherman
My Memories of Gabriel García Márquez My Memories of Gabriel García Márquez
What more could a young writer want than to spend hours and hours with the greatest author alive?
May 6, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Ariel Dorfman
Hungary and the End of Politics Hungary and the End of Politics
How Victor Orbán launched a constitutional coup and created a one-party state.
May 6, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Kim Lane Scheppele
Antiquity Too Antiquity Too
—after Goethe Antiquity too had arms, legs, loins, and while its shadows thrashed on stone it would one day be, fucked, flicker-lit, like you, like me.
May 6, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Christian Wiman