Art and Culture - Quillette (Page 2)

Bruce Springsteen, black and white photograph, head and shoulders, in a striped shirt

Born to Boss

Springsteen and the rock critics.

David Cohen

12 Sep 2024 · 14 min read

Alice Munro, an elderly woman, walks along the foreshore in Canada.

Monstrous Things

Dostoevsky, Alice Munro, and the nature of fiction—what does our inability to forgive do to our ability to confess?

Allan Stratton

1 Sep 2024 · 11 min read

Sacha Guitry as Jean Lécuyer in Ils étaient neuf célibataires (1939), seated at a table, with a polka dot tie

A Filmmaker in Spite of Himself

Sacha Guitry disdained cinema as an art form, but with a slew of recent Blu-ray releases, his acidic comedies are finally receiving the attention they deserve.

Jaspreet Singh Boparai

28 Aug 2024 · 22 min read

Elvis Costello, black and white photograph, in glasses, a shirt, jacket and tie, fingers on the neck of a guitar.

Seventy Years of Spite and Sophistication

Elvis Costello at three score and ten.

Dave Thompson

25 Aug 2024 · 20 min read

Killing for a Quiet Life

John Krasinski’s dystopian horror trilogy imagines a biblical plague visited on the din of modernity.

Thomas Larson

15 Aug 2024 · 7 min read

America’s Last Great Political Novel

In anticipation of the Democrats’ Convention in Chicago, a look back at Joe Klein’s splendid 1996 novel ‘Primary Colors’—a fascinating snapshot of Democratic Party politics at the end of the 20th century.

Kevin Mims

6 Aug 2024 · 22 min read

Composite portrait of Mia Goth's face in her three roles in the trilogy.

Texas Porn Star Massacres

Ti West’s clever and original ‘X’ trilogy is elevated postmodern horror at its finest and its director’s best work to date.

Allan Stratton

24 Jul 2024 · 12 min read

Philip Roth, seated, hands behind head. He's in a suit. Dark hair and thick eyebrows.

Rereading Philip Roth Today

Roth’s early works portray Jewish characters who are fearful of antisemitism in America as paranoid. He later changed his mind—and so have I.

Peter C. Herman

23 Jul 2024 · 12 min read

Map detail of the Hudson River Valley, showing natives in a canoe, as well as beavers, turkeys and a mink

Dutchmen on the Hudson

In the 21st instalment of ‘Nations of Canada,’ Greg Koabel describes how the arrival of Dutch fur traders sparked an upheaval in regional Indigenous geopolitics.

Greg Koabel

20 Jul 2024 · 19 min read

The Man Who Wasn’t There

Richard Morton Jack’s comprehensive new biography of Nick Drake offers a glimpse of a brilliant but troubled soul.

Matt Hanson

19 Jul 2024 · 10 min read

Vincent Price in a black and white film still, holding a wooden object, with a dining table in the background

Abiding Legends

Richard Matheson, George R. Stewart, and the birth of the Calipocalypse.

Kevin Mims

9 Jul 2024 · 23 min read

Rogers Waters, dressed in black, looking manic, against a background of a TV studio wall.

Art over Man: The Roger Waters Test Case

When we create art, we are our best selves, better than the selves we are outside of art.

Thomas P. Balazs

4 Jul 2024 · 9 min read

A modern model depicting Samuel de Champlain’s 1608 Habitation at the site of what is now Quebec City.

The Birth of Quebec

In the twentieth instalment of ‘Nations of Canada,’ Greg Koabel describes how Samuel de Champlain and Récollet missionaries established a fledgling French colony in what we now call Quebec City.

Greg Koabel

4 Jul 2024 · 17 min read

A close up of Robyn Hitchcock's face in black and white with a microphone covering his mouth.

England’s Daydreaming

Robyn Hitchcock’s new memoir takes us back to 1967—a year the British singer-songwriter never outgrew.

Dave Thompson

2 Jul 2024 · 12 min read

Illuminated manuscript style illustration of a coronation.

France’s Founding Fathers: A Review of ‘House of Lilies’

In a new book, Justine Firnhaber-Baker tells the story of the Capetian dynasty (987–1328), whose rulers stitched a set of medieval duchies and counties into a single kingdom.

Charlotte Allen

26 Jun 2024 · 20 min read