The Uninvited Sermon
Why artists, academics and others should not exploit the presence of a captive audience.
Holly Lawford-Smith
· 8 min read
Arts and Culture
A collection of 76 posts
Requiem for a Zine
The zine community was a haven for all types of free-thinking artists, misfits, and heretics—until online mobs turned it into just another bastion of social-justice groupthink.
Hal Niedzviecki
· 21 min read
Games and Thrones
The real history of the era portrayed in Gladiator II is much more interesting, tumultuous, and murderous than Scott’s simpleminded yarn.
Charlotte Allen
· 13 min read
New York Narcissism
Nikkitha Bakshani’s debut novel ‘Ghost Chilli’ is an ideologically confused work that seems to endorse the racial essentialism it purports to satirise.
Brad Strotten
· 5 min read
The Elephant Man in an Era of Cancel Culture: Quillette Cetera Episode 19
Crowds love the irreverence of The Marvellous Elephant Man Musical, but activists want it boycotted.
Zoe Booth
· 1 min read
Narcissism and Fraudulence
Intensive con artistry may be a narcissistic strategy for the avoidance of self-knowledge.
Anthony Eagan
· 12 min read
Remix and Float Downstream
Giles Martin has reinvigorated the Beatles’ masterpiece, a record brimming with ideas, confidence, and insouciant courage.
Christopher J. Snowdon
· 11 min read
French Nobels
Dynamite, literature, and the rise of the engaged intellectual.
Robert Zaretsky
· 10 min read
FDR and the Holocaust
A widely praised new series by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein distorts the historical record to rehabilitate a flawed US president.
Ronald Radosh
· 26 min read
Poetic Justice
How an octogenarian artist defied curatorial bureaucracy.
Julia Friedman
· 9 min read
A Strange and Brutal Country
Adam Curtis’s new BBC series provides a unique insight into Russia’s late-twentieth-century collapse.
Christopher J. Snowdon
· 7 min read
The Real Star of M*A*S*H
A personal tribute to the overlooked genius of writer W.C. Heinz.
Kevin Mims
· 13 min read
Peter Straub, 1943–2022
Farewell to another of the Big Six novelists from the Golden Age of American horror fiction.
Kevin Mims
· 13 min read
The Striver’s Curse
A review of Arthur C. Brooks’s new book, ‘From Strength to Strength.’
Ari David Blaff
· 6 min read
Go Ask Beatrice: Notes on a Dishonest Decade
An outstanding new book tells the story of a wildly successful literary hoax. But it was just one of many.
Kevin Mims
· 29 min read