Hidden Bird Hidden Bird
Song birds enter the morning the pre-dawn before the fires, you know, when the night floats away like vapor on a lake, or like kisses in the woods. Songs that even creation might not remember. Continuous, threaded, as if a cherry pit were stuck in the throat to produce the trumpet of the branches. So varies, yet never, changing through all the days, since reptiles fell to earth. I give up the reason for the sound I give up the creature of sound and the creator of the creatures and of us and of dawn and air and of vacuum and human inhumanity. I give up the song. I give up the place
Nov 20, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Joseph Ceravolo
I’m Nobody, Who Are You? On Zadie Smith’s ‘NW’ I’m Nobody, Who Are You? On Zadie Smith’s ‘NW’
If you get to the top, only to find that the voice hounding you with charges of inauthenticity is your own, what then?
Nov 20, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Alexandra Schwartz
The Noble and the Base: Poland and the Holocaust The Noble and the Base: Poland and the Holocaust
Can the two central images of Poland during World War II—a country of heroes and a country of collaborators—ever be combined?
Nov 14, 2012 / Books & the Arts / John Connelly
Children of the Storm: Education and Social Mobility Children of the Storm: Education and Social Mobility
Paul Tough and Jonathan Kozol examine how decades of family-unfriendly policies have heightened the stress experienced by many children at home and school.
Nov 14, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Helen C. Epstein
Generation X: On Wade Guyton and Gerhard Richter Generation X: On Wade Guyton and Gerhard Richter
Why two artists use a printer to make paintings without using paint.
Nov 14, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Barry Schwabsky
A Peculiar Revolt: On Marcus Rediker’s ‘The Amistad Rebellion’ A Peculiar Revolt: On Marcus Rediker’s ‘The Amistad Rebellion’
Public sympathies and political outcomes over the Amistad Africans drifted in opposite directions.
Nov 7, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Nicholas Guyatt
Totalitarianism, Famine and Us Totalitarianism, Famine and Us
Have histories of famines caused by totalitarianism become a distraction to the new politics of hunger?
Nov 7, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Samuel Moyn
Transmigrations Transmigrations
Tom Tykwer and Lana and Andy Wachowski’s Cloud Atlas, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, Ra’anan Alexandrowicz’s The Law in These Parts.
Nov 7, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
The Journeys of Fred Halliday The Journeys of Fred Halliday
On socialism or the Middle East, Fred Halliday’s intellectual flexibility was one of his greatest strengths.
Oct 30, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Susie Linfield
Singularly Adaptable: On Alain Mabanckou Singularly Adaptable: On Alain Mabanckou
In Black Bazaar, characters vent and stumble over their shared obsession with the colonial past.
Oct 30, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Aaron Thier