All Essays

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  The End of the Beginning

  Los Angeles was different. No tear gas here: our elected representatives wanted us to be comfortable.

  Ben EhrenreichDec 13, 2011
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  Tiger Lady: On Joan Williams

  Faulkner tried the personae of mentor, father figure, and literary conduit in an effort to have a love affair that trumped the other roles.

  Lisa C. HickmanDec 11, 2011
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  Sucker Punch

  A response to Glen David Gold’s piece

  
  

  about William Faulkner and Joan Williams.

  E.C. McCarthyDec 11, 2011
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  The Pump You Pump the Water From

  Writing can't be planned for or predicted, and when it happens, when the surge begins, it brings a satisfaction like nothing else.

  Sven BirkertsDec 5, 2011
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  Letter From Cairo

  Because riot police aimed their firearms at protesters’ faces, over 80 Egyptians lost one of their eyes.

  Frederick DeknatelDec 5, 2011
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  Between the Georges: In Memory of George Hickenlooper (1963-2010)

  He seemed poised at last for the first-class recognition he had worked for so vigorously his whole life.

  F.X. FeeneyDec 4, 2011
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  From the Other Coast

  On poetry and riot.

  Lytton SmithDec 2, 2011
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  Deconstructing Wendy

  This play unfolds, as so many contemporary dramas now do, over the medium of email.

  Deborah Frost, Joy HorowitzNov 25, 2011
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  A Serious Man Whose Love Will Last

  It is ironic that Ovid had barely finished his long poem when his exile was decreed.

  Bruce WhitemanNov 24, 2011
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  Zimbabwe and the Politics of Impunity

  Mugabe’s denials can and should now be read as a chilling reminder that the depths to which his regime has sunk today had already been charted

  Alex LichtensteinNov 23, 2011

• Notes on Hack

  A Hack comic is a sheep in wolf’s clothing, “poking fun,” never “killing.” He is the jester who won’t risk the king’s displeasure.

  Nov 20, 2011
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  Three Novels

  By Nightfall, like The Hours, is chock full of literary reference, especially Thomas Mann (Death in Venice), not Virginia Woolf.

  Susan Salter ReynoldsNov 19, 2011
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  The Things We Carry

  I wondered if O’Brien’s words, like explosive devices hidden in the humid jungles, had triggered these awful images, or if Iraq simply played forever in Mike’s head, a fractured repetitive loop.

  Jocelyn HeaneyNov 18, 2011
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  Books That Made Us: The Phantom Tollbooth

  The adventure in The Phantom Tollbooth doesn’t change; it’s the meaning we find in it that evolves.

  Chelsey PhilpotNov 17, 2011

• The Educational Lottery

  Education is as close to a secular religion as we have in the United States.

  Nov 15, 2011

• Brumaire

  On Occupy Cal and the fight over public education in California.

  Nov 13, 2011