Art and Culture - Quillette (Page 18)

Fatal Vision: Joel Coen’s ‘Macbeth’

In Shakespeare’s play, the Weïrd Sisters undoubtedly spur Macbeth toward evil by tempting him toward his dark ambition.

Marilyn Simon

19 Jan 2022 · 8 min read

Bitter Fruit: Marshall McLuhan and the Rise of Fake News

McLuhan’s phenomenal success stemmed from being in the right place at the right time.

Graham Majin

18 Jan 2022 · 16 min read

The Schenker Controversy

History is complicated, people are complicated, and Schenker himself was a complex individual.

Timothy L. Jackson

20 Dec 2021 · 21 min read

The Universal Structure of Storytelling

Storytelling is then—in every era and every culture—a dramatization of the everlasting war between the princesses and the tigers.

Jonathan Gottschall

29 Nov 2021 · 11 min read

History Lessons from the Toronto Mob Targeting a 19th-Century Gay Icon

Allan Stratton

26 Nov 2021 · 15 min read

How D.B. Cooper and the Golden Age of Air Piracy Changed Aviation Fiction

Frank Sinatra's “Come Fly With Me” was the best-selling album in the United States for five weeks in 1958, but the irony of its popularity (or, perhaps, the source of its aspirational appeal) is that practically none of us could take up the offer to "glide, starry-eyed&

Kevin Mims

24 Nov 2021 · 33 min read

High White Notes: The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism—A Review

A review of High White Notes: The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism by David S. Wills. Beatdom Books, 555 pages. (November 2021) I. In High White Notes, his riveting new biography of Hunter S. Thompson, journalist David S. Wills describes Thompson as America’s first rock star reporter and

Kevin Mims

11 Nov 2021 · 25 min read

Does Christine Brown Deserve to Burn in Hell?

In the pitiless moral universe of writer-director Sam Raimi’s 2009 horror film ‘Drag Me to Hell,’ guilt isn’t easily absolved and debts must always be paid in the end.

Jamie Palmer

31 Oct 2021 · 12 min read

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the Meaning of Human Suffering

Every situation is distinguished by its uniqueness, and there is always only one right answer to the problem posed by the situation at hand.

Samuel Kronen

28 Oct 2021 · 27 min read

Cancelling the Beat Generation

Almost from its inception, the Beat Generation seemed to be doomed to failure. In and around Columbia University, a ragtag group of bohemians coalesced based upon an odd array of mutual interests. Two of them were homosexuals, one bisexual, and all were interested in drugs and subversive literature. William S.

David S. Wills

8 Oct 2021 · 9 min read

Rocker Crocked. Pistol Shot.

To say that Lydon has mellowed would be a huge over-simplification, not only of who he is now but of who he was then, both of which were media distortions if not inventions.

Simon Evans

4 Oct 2021 · 9 min read

Revisiting ‘Wake in Fright’, A Peculiarly Australian Kind of Hell

Five decades after its release, Wake in Fright remains a brutally captivating reminder that modernity is just a thin veneer over the darker recesses of the human heart.

Ryan Anderson

28 Sep 2021 · 16 min read

The Truth about Autogynephilia

Sexual tastes you do not share are inevitably hard to comprehend. But autogynephilia is especially so, since it is rare and even more rarely spoken of.

Helen Joyce

7 Sep 2021 · 17 min read

Mrs. Dalloway: Secularism and Its Enchantments

Woolf’s depiction of these inner rhythms would be refined in the novels that followed—To the Lighthouse and The Waves—but Dalloway was the true birth of this form.

Jared Marcel Pollen

2 Sep 2021 · 13 min read

The Victims’ Race

Victimhood may confer ancient and effective advantages, but researchers are nonetheless alarmed by the scale of digital self-harm in adolescents, and the recent recourse to false accusations more generally.

Tomasz Witkowski

27 Aug 2021 · 10 min read