Essays Archive | Los Angeles Review of Books

All Essays

The Return of the Repressed
Arabic is one of the six most spoken languages in the world today, with more than 400 million people using one of its varieties.
Kaya GençDec 11, 2015
- Cultural Studies
- Nonfiction
“The Tribe” and the Language of Cinema
The more we meet "The Tribe" on its own terms, the more we are reminded that Sergey's tribe lacks something.
Annie Julia WymanDec 10, 2015
- Film
Free Speech, Minstrelsy, and the Avant-Garde
Avant-garde poetics and minstrelsy in a year of controversies involving Vanessa Place and Kenneth Goldsmith.
Chris Chen, Tim KreinerDec 10, 2015
- Poetry
Amarillo Ramp: Minimalism and Country Music on the American Highway
On the history and imagined comminglings of minimalism and country music.
Michael BlairDec 9, 2015
- Music
“Another University Is Possible”: Thoughts on Student Protests and Universities in Postcolonial Africa
The modern university is an efficient site for the neoliberal commoditizing of knowledge.
Desiree LewisDec 9, 2015
Dear Parents: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University But Don’t
Universities, in the interest of increasing enrollments (= money), are willing to flatter you and your children so shamelessly …
Ron SrigleyDec 9, 2015
Before and After “Eichmann in Jerusalem”: Hannah Arendt and the Human Condition
A Jew who was (and is) called anti-Semitic for her controversial portrait of Eichmann.
Kathleen B. JonesDec 8, 2015
- Philosophy & Religion
33 Words to Explain Syria
A glossary to explain Syria.
Tom StreithorstDec 7, 2015
- Politics
Paris: A Tale of Two Cities
"What strikes us today as terrifyingly new would in 1914 strike many Parisians, mutatis mutandis, as little more than déjà vu."
Robert ZaretskyDec 7, 2015
- Cultural Studies
- History
Not a British Subject: Race and Poetry in the UK
Not a British Subject: Race and Poetry in the UK.
Sandeep ParmarDec 6, 2015
- Poetry
No, Crisis
The crisis of criticism is in what no longer gets written, in what never gets written in the first place. Part of LARB's No Crisis series.
Dec 6, 2015
Shoe Leather: On “Spotlight”
For writer-director McCarthy and his co-writer Singer, "Spotlight" is a leap in terms of scale and depth.
Charles TaylorDec 5, 2015
Geeking Out to “Hitchcock/Truffaut”
Geeking Out to "Hitchcock/Truffaut."
Katie KilkennyDec 5, 2015
- Film
Bali Diary: At the 2015 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival
A visit to the 2015 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali.
Maria BustillosDec 3, 2015
- Literary Fiction
- Travel
Dispatches from AFI: Consider “The Lobster”
Lanthimos specializes in films that make people uncomfortable, the kind of movies that critics call "challenging."
Katie KilkennyDec 2, 2015
- Film
Mystery on (and off) Television
When "The Returned" separates mystery from procedure, they start to look very different from one another, even antithetical.
Paul W. GleasonDec 1, 2015
- Television