Modernity
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Modernity’s Self-Destruct Button November 15, 2024
All politics is local, as they say. And so, before we proceed to the big question of this essay—Can modernity survive for much longer?—I want to start with a small one: Will the recent change of government make a difference to the people of Britain?...
Love in the Time of Menopause November 14, 2024
Two novels of the moment—the film director and screenwriter Miranda July’s sparkly and funny All Fours; and the moody and emotional Don’t Be A Stranger, by Susan Minot—present middle-aged women sexually obsessed with unavailable younger men. The setu...
Stuck in Reverse November 14, 2024
Nearly every element of every thing produced by a modern economy rides on a truck at some point in its life. As a result, trucking touches every industry in America, leaving truckers at the forefront of the nation’s economic turmoil over many decades...
No Man Is an Island November 13, 2024
In the last weeks of 1623 London was in the throes of one of those infectious disease outbreaks characteristic of the era. A “spotted fever,” most likely typhus, was cutting a swath through the city’s tightly packed neighborhoods, and in late Novembe...
Melania November 12, 2024
Certain levels of dignity and poise are typically limited to aristocrats groomed for positions of influence from birth. Access, resources, and opportunities are readily available to those who are bred in situations of modern royalty. But, in rare cir...
Absurdity of Trying to Capture Childhood on a Phone November 07, 2024
When I learned that I was pregnant with my first child – a daughter – I did what most citizens of the modern world do. I snapped a picture of a positive pregnancy test, creating the first photographic record of the new, precious life I now knew was g...
A More Practical Argument for Free Speech November 06, 2024
One of the most persistent pitfalls in political argumentation is a version of the fallacy of false equivalence. A friend dubs it the fallacy of ripe apples and rotten oranges. In a political context, it's when an advocate compares an idealized or be...
The Best Precedent for the Next President November 04, 2024
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are both intimately familiar with the White House—Trump as a former president, Harris as next-in-line to President Biden—but the 235-year record of the presidential office has much to teach even these experienced leader...
The People Who Rage Against the Machine September 18, 2024
STORY, WYOMING — It’s open mic night at The Wagon Box inn. The crowd has just been treated to two love poems, an ancient Byzantine chant, and a Twitter thread on raw milk, read aloud. Now, a local 19-year-old named Matt is going to play the accordion...
The Ultimate Bond Film Turns 60 September 13, 2024
“You expect me to talk?”“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!”Even that small minority of the Earth’s population who wouldn’t normally watch a James Bond movie can quote that exchange from Goldfinger, spoken as Bond follows the progress of a laser beam...
Embrace Your Inner Exile September 13, 2024
Approaching the Tate Modern to see the Kandinsky, Münter and The Blue Rider exhibition, I knew what to expect when visiting a mainstream cultural institution in the Current Year. But I had an idea about how to make it bearable, borrowing a strategy f...
Seeing Through a Monster’s Eyes September 12, 2024
I have been trying to write something about The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar-winning film about Rudolph Höss (played by Christian Friedel), the commandant at Auschwitz, for months, ever since I saw it for the first time. That was on Octo...
Why You Should "Rawdog" Parenting September 09, 2024
What do I mean by this, you ask?Allow me to explain!First, for those who don’t know, “raw dogging” is a crude term used to describe the act of intercourse without using protection. But it has been hilariously repurposed by the internet to describe su...
Celebrating the Centennial of the Most Underappreciated American of Our Time September 06, 2024
The following essay is adapted from the recently released book Lessons in Liberty: Thirty Rules for Living from Ten Extraordinary Americans (HarperCollins) September 7th marks the one-hundredth birthday of one of the most extraordinary and inspiring...
Author Spotlight: Matthew Davis, ‘Let Me Try Again’ September 06, 2024
Ross Mathcamp might have just become a millionaire overnight due to losing both of his parents in a helicopter crash on route to Turks & Caicos, but it’s the least of his worries. He willingly let go of his girlfriend Lora Liamant, the love of his li...
Language and Leonard Michaels September 05, 2024
All that great writing, trapped in mediocre books! —Elif BatumanCatachresis leads to anthropophagy. —David Bentley HartOrdinary people have a right to feel harassed when their language is criticized. We have grammar school for that kind of thing afte...
Jillian Luft’s Modern Romance September 05, 2024
Scumbag Summer opens with photographs. The first image shows two severed cigarettes in an ashtray followed by the lit sign for a sports bar called “Body Talk.” The third image succeeds an impressive array of blurbs. It is a faded version of the book’...
Why Freedom Needs Manners September 04, 2024
Thinking about belching? Remember to look up at the ceiling. Or at least that’s what Daniel of Beccles, in his text Book of the Civilized Man, counseled men to do in the high Middle Ages when they got that queasy feeling. Alexandra Hudson eloquently ...
What Was Great About the Great Communicator September 02, 2024
Ronald Reagan is back on the big screen, this time with a look back at Morning in America rather than Bedtime for Bonzo. The new film Reagan, starring Dennis Quaid as the fortieth president, hits theaters as the 2024 presidential campaign kicks into ...
Another Prophecy Fulfilled September 02, 2024
When modernity itself seems to be tearing apart at the seams, best to turn to J. G. Ballard.The English novelist, who died in 2009, retains his prophetic edge; while the West has yet to become an actual Orwellian nightmare—the elections still free an...
How Charles Taylor Would Heal the Ills of Modernity June 20, 2024
Lyric poets and mathematicians, by general agreement, do their best work young, while composers and conductors are evergreen, doing their best work, or more work of the same kind, as they age. Philosophers seem to be a more mixed bag: some shine earl...
The Odd Couple June 18, 2024
Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene had one of the great modern literary friendships — comparable to Conrad and Ford, Eliot and Pound, Owen and Sassoon. Strikingly similar in many ways, they were close contemporaries and came from professional middle-clas...
Can Feminist Films Be Conservative? June 18, 2024
It’s too bad you’re not a man,” the mayor of New York City tells the Italian-American Catholic missionary Frances Xavier Cabrini in the recent movie Cabrini. “You would’ve been an excellent man.”She replies, “No, Mayor. Men can never do what we do.”T...
How “The Real World” Created Modern Reality TV June 17, 2024
One spring day in 1992, Eric Nies, a twenty-year-old model from New Jersey, walked into a swanky SoHo loft that he shared with six other young people. In the kitchen, he found two of his housemates, Heather B. Gardner and Julie Oliver, flipping throu...
Richard Nixon’s California Cool June 12, 2024
It’s a canonical image of Richard Nixon, weirdo:Marching on the beach in the most subversive year in American history, 1969, the new president parallels the Southern California surf in wingtips. In a year of cults, communism, and killing celebrities,...
