Farewell, My Lovely
Chinatown is a remarkable blend of screenwriter Robert Towne and director Roman Polanski’s antipodal sensibilities.
Graham Daseler
· 14 min read
Books
A collection of 214 posts
Immigration and Inequality
For people without a foothold in the new service and financial businesses, it was harder to make ends meet.
Christopher Caldwell
· 8 min read
Romance and Retribution
As an institution grows and evolves, it inevitably requires reform, but that task can only be entrusted to those who have its best interests at heart.
Jamie Palmer
· 34 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
· 13 min read
On the Study of Great Books
Great books require intelligence and judgment, and the exploration of sometimes quite fundamental disagreement, from the outset.
Andrew Gleeson
· 18 min read
The Decadent Society—A Review
Writing about decadence can be symptomatic of the condition.
Ben Sixsmith
· 7 min read
Margaret Atwood Wrote a Great Novel. Unfortunately, Her Fans Turned It Into a Cult
Atwood’s innovation is to give this dystopian nightmare the distinctly female framing of domestic and sexual enslavement—as experienced by “Offred,” a “Handmaid” assigned to a man named Fred and his wife for surrogate motherhood via monthly copulation.
Cathy Young
· 15 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
· 11 min read
The Million-Petalled Flower
He had the gift of producing them by inverting or adapting cliché to give it new life.
Andrew Gleeson
· 15 min read
Corbynite Economics
In many ways, it is a book that feels badly out of date, and it is unlikely to be of interest to many people beyond those who already agree.
Sam Bowman
· 11 min read
Science Fiction Purges its Problematic Past
Instead, as speculative fiction becomes more diverse, the sense that it must be corrected grows, and author and art are evaluated together.
Craig DeLancey
· 9 min read
'For the Love of Men'—A Review
I am sure that men, and the world in general, would be better off if we could foster more intimate male friendships and more honest interaction between men and doctors but some idealised vision of male sensitivity might shatter when confronted with the stresses of the world.
Ben Sixsmith
· 7 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
· 8 min read
Gilead Resembles an Islamic Theocracy, not Trump’s America
Misogynist thinking and actions exist in America today but not only among right-wing conservatives. It is also flourishing among our media and academic elites.
Phyllis Chesler
· 14 min read
The Problem with Sensitivity Readers
Sensitivity readers are typically sought by authors writing about some marginalized group—a culture to which they don’t personally belong, or a community about which they don’t feel they have complete expertise, and about which they want to be warned of any overlooked biases or stereotypes.
Ryan Holiday
· 10 min read