Colin Marshall

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall hosts the Korean-language podcast 콜린의 한국 (Colin's Korea) and is at work on a book called The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. You can follow him at his website, on Twitter @colinmarshall, or on Facebook.

Articles

You Must Change Your Writing Style: Ward Farnsworth’s Guidebooks to English Virtuosity and Ancient Philosophy
Our culture is preoccupied with content to the almost total exclusion of form, and that’s bad....
Colin MarshallMay 22, 2022
The Yankee Who Didn’t Go Home: On Robert Whiting’s “Tokyo Junkie”
An American author’s memoir of his six decades in Japan and his love affair with Tokyo....
Colin MarshallMar 28, 2022
- Translation
Born Middle-Aged: Eight Books on Steely Dan
A review of the literature on the hyperliterate jazz-rock ironists from 1970s L.A....
Colin MarshallNov 21, 2021
- Music
What Do They Know of English, Who Only English Know? On Gaston Dorren’s “Lingo: Around Europe in Sixty Languages” and “Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages”
Colin Marshall explores the allure of polyglotism and the perils of linguistic hegemony through “Lingo” and “Babel” by Gaston Dorren....
Colin MarshallJun 3, 2020
Something New: The “LRB” Turns 40
Celebrating four decades of the “London Review of Books.”...
Colin MarshallJan 14, 2020
- Translation
From the Age of Persuasion to the Age of Offense
A new book about why free speech matters, even when it hurts....
Colin MarshallDec 23, 2019
- Education
- Politics and Economics
The Useless French Language and Why We Learn It
Colin Marshall examines English speakers’ relationship to the French language, which is the subject of a growing number of books....
Colin MarshallAug 2, 2018
- Cultural Studies
- Translation
Will We Ever Talk Pretty?: David Sedaris and the American Struggle with Foreign Languages
Colin Marshall contemplates David Sedaris’s experiences with language-learning....
Colin MarshallDec 5, 2017
- Memoir
- Translation
Down with the English Language!
Colin Marshall looks at books by Minae Mizumura and Aamir R. Mufti that lament the rise of global English....
Colin MarshallOct 5, 2017
- Cultural Studies
- Translation
Music Meets Writing: On Haruki Murakami and Seiji Ozawa
Colin Marshall listens closely to “Absolutely on Music: Conversations with Seiji Ozawa” by Haruki Murakami....
Colin MarshallApr 10, 2017
Ways of Seeing Japan: Roland Barthes’s Tokyo, 50 Years Later
Colin Marshall looks back on Roland Barthes’s look at Japan in “Empire of Signs.”...
Colin MarshallDec 31, 2016
- Cultural Studies
- Translation
How Japan Invented Los Angeles — and Reinvented American Style
Colin Marshall takes the measure of “Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style” by W. David Marx....
Colin MarshallSep 12, 2016