Kevin Mims - Quillette (Page 4)

Farewell, Alex Trebek

On Friday, November 6th, between 1 and 2pm Pacific Daylight Time, I participated in an audition for the TV game-show Jeopardy!. Normally auditions are conducted in person at various regional locations around the US. As a Northern Californian, I should have been attending a live audition in San Francisco. But

Kevin Mims

13 Nov 2020 · 14 min read

Corruption and Remorse—The Novels of a Watergate Conspirator

As an avid reader of pop fiction, I’m more partial to the Nixon administration than any other White House. The Reagan years may have produced more crooks, and the Trump years may have produced more chaos, but there is one measure by which the criminal and criminal-adjacent members of

Kevin Mims

17 Sep 2020 · 19 min read

Barney Rosset and the Unending Struggle to Read Freely

It is by now a familiar truism that the Internet—and social media, in particular—has awarded the intolerant, the narrow-minded, and the censorious unprecedented power. To this challenge from below, publishers have, by and large, responded with dismaying timidity. Large multinational publishing firms have hastily withdrawn controversial titles and

Kevin Mims

6 May 2020 · 22 min read

Warehouse Work in an Age of Contagion

As regular readers of Quillette will know, I work at a warehouse in West Sacramento, California, where every workday I toil in close quarters with dozens of other employees. In the days before the advent of the novel coronavirus pandemic, that wasn’t a problem. Now, however, it’s a

Kevin Mims

30 Mar 2020 · 6 min read

The Decline of the Great American Family Saga

In February, the Atlantic published a much discussed essay by David Brooks entitled “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake.” Brooks noted that the conditions that once made nuclear families viable—strong unions, plenty of jobs that paid living wages, inexpensive housing and transportation and education costs, stay-at-home mothers, high numbers

Kevin Mims

28 Feb 2020 · 13 min read

The National Book Foundation Defines Diversity Down

Last month the Huffington Post published an essay by Claire Fallon entitled “Was this Decade the Beginning of the End of the Great White Male Writer?” Fallon celebrated the notion that white men are losing their prominence in contemporary American literature and that the best books being published in America

Kevin Mims

7 Jan 2020 · 11 min read

'White Christmas' and the Triumphs of the Greatest Generation

Michael Curtiz’s 1954 classic White Christmas is so popular that it generates new think-pieces every time the holiday season rolls around. Last year, the New York Times republished its own original review of the film, in which the late Bosley Crowther panned the movie. Other pieces in other places

Kevin Mims

20 Dec 2019 · 11 min read

In Praise of Sylvia Plath's Forgotten (Sorority) Sister

A tragic early death can do wonders for a writer’s reputation. On October 27, Google dedicated its search page to the late Sylvia Plath, who would have turned 87 that day, had she not taken her own life, at the age of 30, back in 1963. It seems unlikely

Kevin Mims

28 Oct 2019 · 8 min read

'Cancel Culture,' Roaring Twenties-Style

The term “cancel culture” has become hotly contested of late. Critics say it is indiscriminately used to describe different degrees of mass opprobrium produced by transgressions that range from the trivial to the criminal. Now, while mob justice is never a particularly good idea, it is certainly true that some

Kevin Mims

27 Sep 2019 · 12 min read

William Peter Blatty's Counter-Countercultural Parable

In her new book Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics (excerpted in Quillette on August 27), essayist and cultural critic Mary Eberstadt documents just how damaging the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and its normalization of divorce in particular, has been to America’s children. She mentions

Kevin Mims

13 Sep 2019 · 13 min read

How (and Why) to KISSASS

On June 29, the New York Times published an essay entitled “I’ve Picked My Job Over My Kids,” in which lawyer and law professor Lara Bazelon wrote movingly about her professional life, how much personal satisfaction she derives from it, and how it gives meaning to her days. In

Kevin Mims

6 Aug 2019 · 7 min read

Tourist Journalism Versus the Working Class

A few days before the Fourth of July, British comic John Oliver used the pulpit of his US infotainment show, Last Week Tonight, to deliver a lengthy monologue about the depredations of Amazon.com. His specific complaint was that Amazon doesn’t treat its employees very well. According to Oliver,

Kevin Mims

19 Jul 2019 · 17 min read

Pop Fiction's Rich History of #MeToo Drama

Lately, the very serious people who write about TV and film and books for publications such as the New Yorker and the New York Times have been tripping over themselves to heap praise on highbrow novelists, filmmakers, and screenwriters who have used their platforms to tackle issues such as rape

Kevin Mims

19 Jun 2019 · 12 min read

Goodbye, Herman Wouk

On May 17th, American novelist Herman Wouk died, just ten days before he was due to turn 104. If Ernest Hemingway’s life and career had been as long as those of Herman Wouk, he’d have been alive as recently as 2003 and he’d have published a book

Kevin Mims

18 May 2019 · 8 min read

Banned Books Week: 10 Pop Fictions to Annoy the Politically Correct

These are the books you should read with great ostentation at sidewalk bistros, corner restaurants, and in doctors’ waiting rooms.

Kevin Mims

26 Sep 2018 · 15 min read