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Afraid of the Novel August 17, 2023
The following review is part of RealClear Books & Culture's symposium on Joseph Epstein's 'The Novel, Who Needs It?'On the evidence of this slim book defending the novel in our age of its diminished relevance, there are whole libraries full of novels...
The Indispensable Novel August 17, 2023
The following review is part of RealClear Books & Culture's symposium on Joseph Epstein's 'The Novel, Who Needs It?'An odd characteristic of the novel, Joseph Epstein writes, is that it is perfectly possible to have read one thoroughly and to retain ...
Private Tyrants, Public Remedies August 17, 2023
In recent years, there has been a revival of interest in anti-trust policy in the United States. Scholars like Tim Wu and Matt Stoller have released summaries of the history of anti-trust action in America, the United States Congress has held hearing...
An Interview with Alicia Kennedy August 17, 2023
If you are a person who, for ethical, environmental, or health reasons, chooses not to consume animal products, at some point or other, you will be asked: “How do you know if someone’s a vegan?” A pause. “Don’t worry, they’ll let you know.”I’ve heard...
Robbie Robertson Was Everyman August 17, 2023
Jaime Royal “Robbie” Robertson, the guitarist and principal songwriter for The Band, died on Aug. 9, 2023. He was 80 years old.Robertson was born in my hometown of Toronto, raised by a mother from Canada’s Mohawk First Nation and an Anglo-Canadian fa...
A Close Listen to “Rich Men North of Richmond” August 17, 2023
Nobody really knows why a song becomes popular, especially now that record companies have mostly ceded their promotional efforts to the mysteries of social-media algorithms. When I start to hear a song more than a few times, I assume that it became p...
What Is Time For? August 17, 2023
In his Confessions, Saint Augustine describes a fascinating moment in his conversion to the Christian faith. At the time, he was a successful teacher of rhetoric in Milan, living with his longtime concubine and their son. He had a group of close frie...
Arizona Futurism August 17, 2023
I spent many years around and inside New York City. It was the beating heart of not just the state, region, or country, but the entire global financial system. New York City is home to 8 million people but its wider tri-state urban sprawl totals 20 m...
Stop Asking "Friends" to Confront Racism August 16, 2023
Like many children of the VHS era, I grew up rewinding the Star Wars trilogy box set, its paper casing worn and ripped after endless slumber parties and sick days. And then came 1997. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Star Wars, George Lucas, the ...
Why Bill Watterson Vanished August 16, 2023
When Bill Watterson walked away from Calvin and Hobbes in 1995, he was exhausted. The comic strip had consumed ten years of his life, the latter half of which were spent fighting his syndicate for creative control and warring with himself as he fitfu...
The Poisoned Well August 16, 2023
Art is often treated like an accessory, an emblem, a representation of whatever you hope your identity to be. The prints on your wall, the music in your playlists, the books you have read or pretended to read—all add up, in this shoot-first digital c...
My Generation August 16, 2023
I recall having breakfast at a hotel in Brussels in 2017 and sitting across from Douglas Coupland, the author of Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, the 1991 book that gave my generation a sort of name that was really only a placeholder f...
A Doll’s House August 16, 2023
At the time of her death in 2019, Rachel Ingalls was, according to loved ones, at last starting to delight in her embrace by the literary world. “She was so happy,” her sister, Sarah Daughn, told the New York Times; it was as if Ingalls finally “felt...
Master of the Minimal August 16, 2023
Truth and history. There’s the adage that says winners write the history books. It’s obvious that this follows: the winner controls or tries to control what is known. Fabrication, distortion, and lacunae are at the same time tools of control and outc...
Why Art Matters, Country Music Edition August 16, 2023
Most of us regard art as mere decoration.We don’t admit that, of course, especially not among the beautiful people we may jostle against in our leisure hours.We might knowingly quote the end of Rainer Maria Rilke’s searing poem “Archaic Torso of Apo...
Keith Waldrop, Award-Winning Poet, Dies at 90 August 16, 2023
Keith Waldrop, whose first poetry collection was a finalist for a National Book Award in 1969 and who won the award 40 years later with his “Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy,” died on July 27. He was 90....
Laughing and Screaming August 15, 2023
In the denouement of Franz Kafka’s short story “The Judgment,” the young protagonist is castigated by his widower father for being an unfaithful son and friend. The father reveals that he has been secretly corresponding with the son’s friends and ste...
Is Pop Crave the Future of Political Journalism? August 15, 2023
If you’ve spent any time on Instagram, Threads, or (especially) the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, there’s a good chance you’ve encountered a Pop Crave post. The odds are probably higher if you’re chronically online — and if you’re ...
Back to Nebraska With Bruce August 15, 2023
Those who know Bruce Springsteen as a sententious septuagenarian who vacations with Masters of the Universe and shills for corporate-progressives who deplore the people who populate his canonical songs cannot understand what he meant, once upon a tim...
When Trucks Fly August 15, 2023
A monster trucker is the kind of person who has a favorite type of dirt. I’ve heard drivers describe a track as fluffy, sticky, loose, tacky, grippy, greasy, slick, crumbly, powdery, bone-dry, baked out, dead, loamy, earthen, sandy, slidey, soupy, sn...
Schrödinger’s Cage Match August 15, 2023
What follows is not news.Earlier today, Elon Musk furthered the narrative that he wishes to engage in hand-to-hand combat with Mark Zuckerberg, tweeting in such a way as to suggest that he was at Zuckerberg’s front door. (Previously, he called Zucker...
The Smear Campaign against JK Rowling August 15, 2023
Here we go again. Another institution, brimming with self-righteous faux outrage, is trying to airbrush JK Rowling’s name out of history. This time it’s the turn of the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) in Seattle, Washington, which has removed the world...
Infinite Joyce: Prolific Oates Takes On Dead Wallace August 15, 2023
“The day of Vladimir Nabokov’s death — July 2, 1977 — is firmly fixed in my memory, for on the following day Donald Barthelme said casually to me, ‘Happy? Nabokov died yesterday, we all move up a notch.’” Now, 46 years and many deaths — including Bar...
"The Border Simulator" by Gabriel Dozal August 14, 2023
A world-bending, lyrically rich poetry collection that reimagines the U.S.-Mexico border as both a real place and a living simulation—and tells the story of a pair of siblings trapped between the two“Word coyote Gabriel Dozal is crossing borders with...
Girl Ray’s Nostalgia Trip August 14, 2023
During disco’s heyday, as Michaelangelo Matos points out in his short, sharp We Won’t Settle for Less: Chic at the End of Disco, the music was everywhere, especially the past. As nostalgia took hold in the Happy Days-era of the 1970s, music was simil...
