A collection of 217 posts
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
We are natural conformers because, more often than not, it keeps us alive and in good standing with our peers.
The sordid and shameful history of eugenics in the U.S. should be better known, as should the role of another prominent American institution that was central to the development of eugenics ideology.
Nineteen-Eighty Four, whose first publication took place 70 years ago today, is itself a sort of anti-novel, one that undermines its own dramatic tension in a way that might now be described as postmodern.
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
An even moderately careful reading of Lolita should make it quite clear that it’s anything but a “celebration” of child rape.
If sensitivity readers become a publishing institution, they will only incentivize more cautious, conservative, and ideologically homogenous books.
Not only is no-one allowed to change for the better anymore, no one is even allowed to be understood, much less forgiven.
While Hanson is good in setting out the causes of Trump’s victory, he falls short when it comes to making recommendations for the future.
Faludy’s greatest weapon—what really allows him to swat away the mosquitoes of passing ideologies—is his delight in sensual pleasures.
Brooks blames America’s bitter politics on the “outrage industrial complex”: the media, politicians and commentators who entice voters, attract television viewers, and sell books and event tickets premised on hatred of the other side.
Houellebecq depicts a Europe where French culture is a bad joke.
Orwell warned that liberty of thought—and literature with it—is endangered when writers in free countries adopt a “totalitarian outlook.”
Sowell distinguishes between the unconstrained vision and the constrained vision.
As far as “master concepts” go, this one is hard to beat. One worries, however, that it is a little too neat.