Essays Archive | Los Angeles Review of Books

All Essays

The Unacknowledged: Black Crime Fiction, the Roaring ’20s to the 1930s
The breadth of crime fiction gives all of us entry to any venue we desire — to retroactively acknowledge the unacknowledged.
Gary PhillipsApr 25, 2016
- Noir
Is There God After Prince?
Put on his songs, any of them. Here, they say. Do you need a reminder of the exhilarating limitlessness of the world apart from the knowable and known? Here you go.
Peter CovielloApr 22, 2016
- Music
400 Blowies: "Girls'" Coming of Age, Finally
This fifth season is a beginning, a coming of age without a clear endpoint or result...as ambivalent and worried as it is triumphant.
Phillip MaciakApr 22, 2016
- Dear Television
How About a Little Poptimism for Tchaikovsky?
Rockism vs. Poptimism through the centuries
Michael MarkhamApr 21, 2016
- Music
Changing the Game: How “Game of Thrones” Rewrites the Rules of Modern TV
Adding insult to injury has become the Game of Thrones formula for a fanatical virtual following.
Theodore GioiaApr 20, 2016
- Television
Sanctuary: Jeanette Winterson Saved My Life
Novelist SJ Sindu tells how Jeanette Winterson's work pulled her outside of her skin and allowed her to see a future in which she was happy.
SJ SinduApr 20, 2016
- Gender & Sexuality
- Memoir & Essay
Toy Story: “The Force Awakens” as Nostalgia Gone Terribly Wrong
The most interesting thing about "Star Wars" today is the intense proximity between the sacred and the profane.
Ira WellsApr 19, 2016
- Film
The Orange Industrial Complex
Orange County’s local distinctions can be traced to the time when the orange was monocultured king, and the local economy arranged around it.
Tom ZoellnerApr 18, 2016
- Nonfiction
Pseudo-Conservatism, the Soldier Male, and the Air Horn
"Male Fantasies," as a psycho-political investigation of authoritarian manhood in extremis, offers a powerful heuristic for our present situation.
Elizabeth SchambelanApr 18, 2016
- Politics
The Writing of Life
Martin WoessnerApr 17, 2016
- Philosophy & Religion
Invisible Shakespeare
Over the centuries, so many technical rhetorical terms have become their own false cognates that while these terms continue to circulate in every day language, our general awareness of the ars rhetorica seem to be lost.
Matthew RitgerApr 17, 2016
- Literary Criticism
In Excess of the Cut: Peter Greenaway’s “Eisenstein in Guanajuato”
David A. GerstnerApr 15, 2016
- Film
Radio Hour: Marcia Clark, Sonny Liew, and Steve Wasserman
LARB Radio HourApr 14, 2016
High Fidelity: The Marriages of “Billions” and “The Americans”
Phillip MaciakApr 14, 2016
- Dear Television
Speaking Substances: Rock
Dana LucianoApr 12, 2016
- Science & Technology
The Hollywood Ladies of Série Noire
Sarah WeinmanApr 11, 2016
- Noir