"You Can’t Be Half a Gangster": On "Boardwalk Empire"
'Boardwalk Empire, 'The Sopranos,' and The Great American Crime Drama.
December 2nd, 2012“Hurt Into Poetry: On Poetry and Greece”By Stephanos Papadopoulos
Los Angeles Review of Books
Flea Market
An essay on the late photographer Miroslav Tichý, excerpted from 'Richard Prince: Collected Writings'.
April 21st, 2011
The Gaza Poetry Roundtable: Part III
Palestinian and Israeli Poets in Conversation
December 2nd, 2012
Our Town: Andy Griffith and the Humor of Mourning
Andy Griffith and the Humor of Mourning
April 20th, 2013
Virtual Violence
The blurring of lines between the digital realm and reality, especially in a time of war, has very real psychological effects.
March 22nd, 2012
Paperback Writers: Georges Simenon
Simenon was a relentless self-mythologizer, but a pitiless self-analyzer too.
February 18th, 2012
Paperback Writers: Rudyard Kipling
Kipling is a fundamentally dark writer.
August 27th, 2011
An Hourglass Figure: On Photographer Francesca Woodman
April 4th, 2013
A Sport of Restraint
On the poetry of archery
July 28th, 2012
Dick Nixon, To Kick Around Evermore
Reconsidering the 37th president
May 1st, 2013
Romero, Blew, Aciman, Hughes
Some doors opened, were squeezed through, then slammed shut, trapping women like Blew in lives filled with unprecedented challenges.
October 22nd, 2011
Three Novels
By Nightfall, like The Hours, is chock full of literary reference, especially Thomas Mann (Death in Venice), not Virginia Woolf.
November 19th, 2011
Discoveries: Tom Bissell, April Bernard, James Franco, John Green, Sarah Manguso
On 'Magic Hours,' 'Miss Fuller,' 'The Dangerous Book Four Boys,' 'The Fault of Our Stars,' and 'The Guardians.'
May 6th, 2012
Discoveries: Franzen, Beachy-Quick, & Baldwin
On 'Farther Away,' 'Wonderful Investigations,' and 'Paris, I love you...'
June 30th, 2012
Discoveries: Denis Johnson, Andrei Makine, & Sue Coe
On 'Train Dreams,' 'The Life of an Unknown Man,' and 'Cruel'
July 30th, 2012
Genres
Film
"There is only one thing that can kill the Movies, and that is education." — Will Rogers... More
Art & Architecture
"Art is making something out of nothing and selling it." — Frank Zappa... More
Science & Technology
"The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not." — Gertrude Stein... More
Literary Fiction
"Mere flim-flam stories, and nothing but shams and lies." — Miguel de Cervantes... More
SF
"The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it." — F... More